Time of Ending: the 40k Finale
by nicholasakira
Summary: 13000 years after Horus, the Imperium is at its breaking point. The space marines are dying off and chaos is ready to claim the galaxy. This is the story of the epic conclusion of the Imperium's wars for survival.
1. The 11th Primarch

" I heard them.

My infant mind could feel them as I lay silent in my metal womb, a pod, as I floated unborn through the warp. This machine embrace shall be the only mother I'll ever know. But as formidable as her iron womb was, she could not stop the warp's intruders from breaching her. I could hear them whispering things to me through her flesh. They tried to take me, but she did not let them. I could not stop them, but she could. I could only wait for mother's arms to bear me to safety.

I left the warp and fell, a comet from the sky, inside me the power of a sun, onto a lost world far away from my Terra, just as all my other brothers had. I was found and raised, not living the life of a boy-god as my brother Sanguinius or the life of comfort beside the Emperor like my brother Horus. No, I ruled my new home, as so many of my other brothers ruled theirs. But the voices found me.

Even in my fortress, lorded over my subjects, who feared my iron boot, I could still hear them singing.

The Emperor came and I gave him my name and allegiance. He gave me 10000 names and 10000 allegiances and told me I could wield them in battle. And I did. And I conquered at the head of my legion. But never could I avoid those voices, those warp-voices, attuned to me, familiar with me, knowing me from the iron mother that floated undefended through the warp. On the dying fields or in the victory halls or in conversation with other space marines I could hear them.

One voice was different.

It told me of an ancient plague that destroyed everything and then vanished.

Then it told me the plague was returning. "

-XI

…

AN UNKNOWN CORNER OF THE GALAXY, SOMETIME DURING THE GREAT CRUSADE…

The room was dark and round, half of its fortified walls hidden by choking shadow. The only source of light came from the central table, which was circular and bore a bright star-map written in holographics above its glimmering surface. The red markings showing the latest troop movements in the Great Crusade were as red as blood spilt in battle.

As miserable, perhaps sinister, as the room was, it carried within its darkened bowl five tremendous honours: no less than five of the Emperor's primarchs. They stood lorded around the star map as still and proud as statues, as imposing as a mountain in midnight, as unbreakable as the galaxy itself. Their armored bodies caught even the minor light of the hologram.

One of them abruptly leaned forward, into the light of the hologram, his slender arms supporting himself unsteadily against the table. The light caught his face, which was mostly shadowed beneath his silky hood. His hands trembled subtly even as he leaned against the table. His gaunt face set him apart from his brothers, who were the very paragons of humanity. Where they were the living pictures of bravery, this primarch always seemed to be on the verge of screaming.

Guilliman looked across the table at his brother primarch and took a moment to consider his face. Though his thin brother was always unsteady, he seemed particularly afraid right now. Guilliman looked to the other three who shared the room. Horus, calm, looked at his unsteady brother, his face soft in the general darkness. Beside him was the winged giant Sanguinius, to whom no shadow clung for long. Across from them, beautiful even in the shadows, was Fulgrim. Of the five of them, the hooded one was the shortest of all. As much as he disliked himself for thinking it, Guilliman abhored his shifty brother.

"Brothers," the leaning man began in a jittery voice, pausing between words as though distracted, "I am glad that you…you are considerate enough to…to come out here from…from the Emperor's…duty."

"Please brother, do not apologize. If this is important, you may have what time you ask," Fulgrim said, brushing his hair from his eyes. The hooded one nodded, his head shaking. He raised his hand. Guilliman knew what he was doing.

"You know what we have been commanded," Guilliman warned ominously. He was ignored and a small jar floated out of the shadows, held aloft by unnatural powers. It set itself upon the table. Sanguinius leaned his height forward to squint into the glass depths of the jar at the tiny prisoner held within.

It looked like an octopus of Terra, but it floated and appeared to be consulting each of the five maliciously.

"Behold the enslaver, a creature of the warp," the hooded one continued. "I…I…"

"Naturally you would be acquainted with them," Fulgrim remarked, his eyes regarding the hooded primarch's body. Guilliman knew what his brother meant.

This primarch had been scattered across the galaxy as the others were. But his capsule was damaged and it let the creatures of the warp upon him. It didn't hinder his brother's ability to command, but it did make him as he was: a man constantly distracted by the voices in his mind. He also had a very unhealthy fascination with the warp, so Guilliman fancied.

"There is an alien text…a piece of text I found," the hooded primarch continued. "I…I…I translated it." He looked up at the enslaver.

"So why have you brought this thing to us?" Guilliman asked. "My legion may need me. I have little time."

"Brother, my studies of the alien text have told me that this…this…this thing and its ilk have been across the galaxy…galaxy before, millions of years ago," the primarch continued, patting the jar, disturbing its occupant. "Brothers, it seems they…flooded out of the warp…millions of years ago. They destroyed all life of the galaxy then in a vast plague of extinction. This one is passive, simple, a babe, but there are others."

"And you wish to warn us that it may happen again?" Sanguinius asked, eyes fixed on the 'enslaver.' The primarch shook his head.

"It…it will happen again but in a very different…different way." He gestured to the star-map. "Brothers…brothers. Have we not been to the furthest reaches of the galaxy? Have…have we not reunited? Have…have we…we not encountered opposition and damnable aliens at every turn?" He trembled. "I can see it…see it. The whole galaxy is rife with enemies. We cannot conquer it." He tapped the jar. "Until now." All four suddenly understood what their short brother had in mind.

"You think that the way to conquer the galaxy is to damn it with a plague of these warp-spawned creatures?" Horus asked.

"We need only weather the…the storm. I think…think I can control…control the enslaver's course to some extent. Then when the enslavers go, when their plague is over, we will be free to repopulate the galaxy, to learn and rebuild as we…we please. No need for this," he indicated the star-map. Sanguinius and Fulgrim disappeared into the shadows both at once.

"I shall not have a part of this," Sanguinius vowed.

"Me also," echoed Fulgrim. Their robed brother leapt back.

"Brothers! Brothers! You do not understand! There is more to…to this! It will be different this time! No warp! No…" the primarch looked hopefully at his remaining brothers. "Brother Horus? Brother Roboute? Shall I have your legions in aid…aid? Help control…control the new enslaver plague? The enslaver…enslavers have changed…you don't understand."

"I'm afraid they are right," Horus sighed in disappointment. "You have wasted my time." He retreated into the darkness.

"Please brother! I…I can end this…this war. I can…can do it with the enslavers! One…one…one storm! One plague!" The primarch threw back his hood and Guilliman averted his eyes. "I beg you! I have endured…endured this war too long! We've already lost one of our brother primarchs, Lord…"

"Do not say the name," Guilliman interrupted, raising a boulder-hand. He extended a finger to point at his frail brother, not taking a look at his face. "You are a madman. You whisper of visions from the immaterium, you tremble and shake, you speak of this unthinkable plan as though speaking of food and you use unnatural powers against the Emperor's will. This is the final stone my brother, I fear you have fallen." Guilliman turned about and headed into the shadows of his brother's headquarters.

"You…you…you are the madman Guilliman! We cannot win this war! This is…is what must be done…done if we are to see the end of it!" shrieked the primarch. "Have you…you even asked yourself if these…these humans are worth fighting for!?"

"The Emperor will hear of this brother, and of your defiance and your mad prattling," Guilliman swore. "I expect he will strip you of your title and command. You and the Hornet Legion will be expunged from the record." Guilliman instead heard a cold laugh from his brother.

"No Roboute, I take my men with me…me. We will find…find the enslavers."

"You take them to their deaths, Apollyon, wherever you go. You will not find what you are looking for and learn nothing except that alien text found in the sand always tells lies," Guilliman promised. Again the primarch laughed. Guilliman afforded one glance at him, thinking he'd come closer.

The primarch was all but invisible in the dark, but Guilliman could still make out his face. The respirator from his incubation capsule has fused to his infant face during the travel through the warp. It was now as much a part of his face as his eyes.

"Do as you…you will then Guilliman," Apollyon sneered from behind the respirator, "but…but I will…will show you. When…when the enslavers arrive, I'll send the first wave straight to Macragge." Guilliman laughed and left.

And the galaxy was covered by war.

For 13 000 years there was death.

And with each passing year, the galaxy fell closer to the Time of Ending


	2. 13000 years after Horus

Somewhere in the galaxy. M44 over 13 000 years after Horus

The humming chamber was lit from the floor by fluorescent lights, which threw shadows at the ceiling. The sound of whimpering and the moaning of arcane machinery was all that was heard inside the chamber of the tiny laboratory. Lining the cold steel walls were many, many phials of coloured fluid, connected by thin tubes that drew out steam from the concoctions, of which, only a madman would understand. Dark brown stains pooled in the corners of the hateful chamber. Tables covered with heaps of notes scrawled on leathery paper lay about. The source of the whimpering was a thin prisoner, shackled to a table, eyes shut and ears covered by muffs.

Fabius Bile stood by his scanner, pressed the machine, fed his latest subject more frequency, and recorded the result.

"Interesting," he muttered to himself as he absently took a small glass phial from a heavy metal arm he had mounted on his back. The fallen Astartes looked at the contents of the phial with his sunken, old man's face and gave its red contents a swish.

"Your blood, my little friend, tells me there is something wrong with your DNA," Fabius told his subject. "Your brain is…twisted and turned. Your flesh is coded with a program that was not meant to be stored by the human matrix. I see a great error in you my little friend. The Inquisition of Terra would call it…mutation." He handed the metal arm the phial. "So strange that it should be you too. An inquisitor of the Emperor, one generation away from devolving into a slobbering monster." Fabius nodded. "Mutation is unbelievably common nowadays. Is it not...." A buzzing noise was heard from the door.

"Who disturbs us?" Fabius asked, walking over to the door as he gestured at a skull-shaped sensor and the door slid open, revealing the night-blackened sky on the little world. A single figure stood in the doorway, alone. Fabius stepped back from the door and pointed. "It is you? How did you find this sanctuary of science?" The figure walked in, his power armor beating the floor with every light step.

"Tracking you was as simple as can be Fabius. My eyes are sharper than you could ever make them." The figure craned his bald head to the table. "Ah, and there's the missing inquisitor." The newcomer walked over to the table, his maniacal lips leering with needle-teeth surrounded by a lipless mouth. His black and pink armor was emblazoned with symbols of chaos and riddled with screaming faces. The luckless prisoner saw, and recognized, the head that was scarred beyond recognition. On one hand a saber, around the other a fleshy whip. Here was none other than Lucius the Eternal.

"So to what do I owe the pleasure of the…" Fabius began, wiping off his hands on a dirty rag.

"He will assemble us soon, Fabius. You know to whom I refer," Lucius sneered. "Ah, I see it in your eyes, in those wise, clever eyes, you know who." Fabius grimaced.

"What does the Despoiler want this time? Perhaps he hopes now to bring the war to Terra itself?"

"That, Fabius, would be…perfection." Lucius traced a scar with his saber. "Your talents are needed by the legions. And…your discovery about what is happening to humanity." Fabius frowned and Lucius threw him a maddening smile.

"How do you know?" Fabius asked, looking at the prisoner as if he would tell him, then back at Lucius.

"Perfection," whispered Lucius.

"That doesn't answer…"

"The screams of battle, the sensation of it! Would you miss it Fabius? Would you miss the…" Lucius' snaking toung licked the inquisitor's forehead, "…sensation?"

The whip around Lucius' arm suddenly began to writhe and dance as if aflame. Lucius looked fondly at it as one would to a child in pain. He was only able to pat it twice when his head shot up and his eyes flashed to the door. His smile faded.

"They're coming. My fleet is under attack, my ground forces assaulted," Lucius whispered to himself, or perhaps his whip. "They're coming." Fabius walked over to the door: the only exit from his one-room laboratory on this damned planet.

"Did they follow you?" Fabius asked, "Imperial lambs?" The door flew off its hinges with astounding force. The door slammed into Fabius and sent him to the ground beneath its iron bulk. The sound of mad bolter fire echoed in and the night was now lit with battle's flame.

"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!" roared the first World Eater as he leapt in. Fabius only had time to look up before a lashing chainaxe lopped off his head in a crimson spray. The slain traitor slumped loosely to the floor, head still rolling after the body had stopped. Lucius ducked forward, laughing, and drove the saber into the bezerker's throat. He jumped back while the man died, bright blood spraying from his split neck.

"Feel the thrill of death," he whispered as the next one entered, but far larger than the other.

"Kharn," Lucius mumbled distastefully.

"Abaddon summons the legions," Kharn began, his iron voice bellowing up from his helmeted head like a thunder from an iron cauldron. He stepped carelessly over his bloodied kinsman. "And you will not answer! Death is upon you!"

"I was afraid I would have to hunt you down too," Lucius laughed. The two began to exchange furious blows. Howling axe met singing saber and lashing whip. Lucius was light and cunning, striking from the side. Kharn had more power, his blows strong and direct. Lucius' only defense from Kharn's chainaxe was a lithe dodge. They fought through the laboratory, smashing phials. Kharn bellowed Khrone's superiority constantly but Lucius only whispered witty replies. Fighting Kharn, he was like silk dodging a sledgehammer.

"The battlefield belongs to Khorne and you peacocks will not pollute it. Khorne will drink deeply of Imperial and of Slaaneshi blood. Yours first. I will break you and feed your living corpse to a bloodthirster. We shall see then if your pink god can protect you then!" Kharn laughed. Lucius knew what he meant: everyone who killed Lucius turned into him by the Prince of Pleasure's will.

Then a blow struck him.

Gorechild, Kharn's chainaxe, cut off Lucius' whip-arm. It fell the ground, the whip flopping around like a beached fish. Gorechild lashed around and bit into his opposite shoulder, then cut deep down into Lucius' body. A shower of rose leapt up from the deepening wound.

"Death is upon you!" snarled Kharn. "But you will not possess me. Terra's blood will call and I will answer." He prepared to take Gorechild out and drag Lucius away.

"The Emperor's Children are defeated…" interrupted a bloodied World Eater, stepping inside as he moved to remove his helmet. Kharn blasted the man's head off with his pistol. Lucius grinned and gasped in pleasure as the axe cut deeper. Blood flew into Kharne's face. He could smell it. It was intoxicating.

"Blood…blood…blood!" Kharn yelled as the insanity of bloodlust took him. "Blood for the blood god!" Lucius laughed as Kharn drove Gorechild into him. The ancient villain died with an ecstatic laugh. Kharn threw him back and knew he had made a grand mistake. His head began to spin as Slaanesh fought for control of his soul. He had doomed himself.

"Kharn! Are you a dead man? The slaughter of captives awaits…" a second World Eater bellowed as he stepped inside.

"Blood for the blood god!" Kharn yelled, lunging at the man, desperate for one last chance at sacrifice to Khorne. He drove himself outside and into the night and, howling, at the survivors who stood arrayed outside. Kharne's world was lost beneath a tide of spraying blood. He could taste its tang through his mask. Soon, every World Eater from his band was dead except him. He was now ready for one final betrayal.

"I can hear you Lucius," Kharn said to the empty air and the piles of giant corpses he had made. "I can hear you! Death is upon you!" Gorechild roared to life and Kharn cut open his own throat with it. Blood dribbled down Kharn's chest. His final betrayal…

A team of stormtroopers found him and the only survivor: Fabius' prisoner. They found Lucius dead in two places. One as himself in Fabius' lab next to the headless body of the madman himself. Lucius also lay dead outside, his throat cut, his body dressed in Worldeater armor. On his forehead was a single, distinct scar.

It was shaped like the symbol of Khorne.

…

Many years later, somewhere else in the galaxy…

It was a paradox. A major shrine world of the Imperium of Man, caught in the bloody typhoon of a mutant uprising of such scale that not even the intervention of the Astartes could save it. Ships, fat with refugees, fled the world of Macharia in pods, carrying millions of people to other corners of segmentum Pacificus, to places free of orks and mutants, or, Emperor forbid, worse. They passed through the lanes of space away from Macharius, disappearing into the stars to wherever they would go. Iron whales of all breeds: merchant ships, passenger ships, even a few navy ships refitted for esteemed refugees, such as priests.

Inquisitor Rarend looked dumbly at the approaching planet from the observation deck, staring menacingly out from beneath the rim of his dipping cloak. He was an unassuming man, four hundred years old, but still with the sharpness and beauty of a thirty-year old. His ageless face was pale, thanks to the nutrient slime that had replaced his blood. He wore a black cloak, emblazoned with the Inquisition's chilling insignia. A pair of short rapiers were sheathed by his waist. A henchman, which looked like a large baby fitted with metal arms and spider-legs, offered him a saucer, upon which stood a cup of tea.

'Rest at last,' Rarend thought, putting the cup to his lips and sipping the bitter liquid.

"I hope the master is pleased," the henchman asked, shakily taking the saucer back.

"I've been so swamped with business…" Rarend sighed. He saw the world approaching, faster and faster. Somewhere down there was an important conference, organized by Segmentum Command. The Inquisition had sent Rarend to represent them. He was a very experienced man of the Ordo Xenos, one of the oldest surviving inquisitors. Hundreds had lost their lives to the mutant rebellions, which were sweeping the galaxy. He tapped his foot on the black marble of the floor of the observation deck.

"Patch me through. I want a readout on the situation on the ground," Rarend ordered nobody. A servo skull drifted in front of him and projected a small holographic screen into his lap. Rarend lowered his hooded head and watched the scenes play out. A voice spoke into his ear from the earpiece implant he carried.

He beheld a scene of a shrine to Lord Macharius. The fifty-meter statue in front of it of the great man had been split in half and fallen on the shrine. He could see crowds of deformed mutants battling PDF troopers over the blood-slick stone of the shrine. Lasbolts and autogun rounds punched men off their feet in rose showers.

"Macharia is currently flooded with 2252 outbreaks of mutant revolt," said the voice in his ear as the video changed to a video of a gothic city, its mighty buildings all looked like cathedrals. They glowed with the light of fire and smoke choked them under their grey cloud. Squads of Arbites, PDF, and even three squads of Astartes of the Dark Angels chapter battled a flood of mutants that had them outnumbered ten times. The Astartes did not flinch, each individual trooper moving down waves of mutants with each weave of their bolters. Bullets bounced off their hides like flying sand fell off concrete.

Eight more times it changed and eight more floods of mutants in holy places flashed across Rarend's eyes. He squeezed the hilt of his rapier and snorted. Mutants! And he thought orks were bad.

"Take me to the Segmentum fortress," Rarend commanded the room as the servo skull buzzed away from him.

"Yes inquisitor."

'The ancient inquisitors of the 43rd Millennium would never have let this happen to Macharia' Rarend thought sadly.

…

One of the ships fleeing from Macharia was small, a merchant vessel. Upon its bridge sat another man in a hood, but it was white in contrast to Rarend's black one. This person was bigger than most men, and armored too, in the distinctive suit worn only by Astartes, coloured dark-green: the colour of the Dark Angels. He did not wear a helmet, but his face was mostly hidden underneath his drooped hood. On his lap was a sword, ornate and build with fantastic craftsmanship. Two pistols sat in his belt: one a plasma pistol, one a bolt pistol. He hadn't wielded the sword in battle for 130 centuries.

Most people called him Cypher.

"Set a course for Terra," Cypher commanded the navigator.


	3. The blade caste

The room was spherical. One half was occupied by rows and rows of seats that echoed the position of the person sitting in them. The Administratum data officer, for instance, sat in a chair that looked like it had been torn from his office. The admirals of the fleet all sat in navy-style chairs, while the governors sat in small thrones. Nothing less than a high official was seated here. It was rumored that one of the High Lords of Terra was here, in secret. If a bomb went off amidst the seats, the Imperium would endure a blow unlike anything felt since the Age of Apostasy. The other half of the chamber was a stage, in front of a huge screen. A decorated Imperial Guard officer strode back and forth across the stage, eyeing the crowd with raptor eyes from beneath his cap. He was nothing less than a Lord General Militant for the whole sector.

'Is it safe to bring so many ranking officials to a planet besieged?' thought Rarend, looking from ancient face to ancient face. He looked up at the officer on the stage as the conference began.

"Lords of the Imperium, officers, inquisitors, governors, kings, and generals, I have brought you to this holy planet. I know that you all crave to hear good news from me. Unfortunately, it shall not come to pass," apologized the Lord General Militant. He looked up at the screen behind him. On cue, the screen lit up to show the galaxy.

Ultima Segmentum was mostly shaded red, giving way around the strongest Imperial strongholds, to represent space that the Tyranids had swept through. Bits of Tempestus, Solar, and Obscurus that neighboured Ultima Segmentum were also red. Everywhere else was covered by thousands of tiny orange or green dots. Each represented a pocket of heavy conflict. Each of those thousands of dots represented one world or star system nearly swept away in war. Only one circle of space remained unaffected, one point in the middle of Segmentum Solar. In the center of this circle of bliss was a tiny Imperial Aquila.

"It has been confirmed," began the Lord General Militant, gesturing to the map, to a flashing dot in Segmentum Pacificus that represented Macharius. "Macharia is now lost to us. The mutants have every corner of the world infested. They've writhed and squirmed into even the most holy places of this world." Behind him, the screen showed them dozens of images.

Mutants, mutants MUTANTS! Everywhere, swarming over fallen Imperial barracks, walking through the cities of Macharia, and forming dark oceans of bodies with their march. Grinning with fanged maws, holding guns with their twisted arms, watching over columns of chained slaves.

All across the galaxy this was happening. The once stable Imperium was now seeing a skyrocketing mutant birth-rate. One in five, so it was whispered. Their uprisings made their homeworlds vulnerable to ork invasions, and they too had increased substantially. Rarend knew the standard scenario that was presently playing out one million times around the remainder of the Imperium that had been spared by the Tyranids.

Mutants grew in number until they could rebel. Blood ran in the streets, millions on both sides were exterminated. Cities burned. Mothers butchered newborns that showed mutation. The PDF and Imperial Guard were pumped into the cities and countryside to try and stem the flood of rebellion. There were no battle-lines or objectives in these stalemates, just grinding quagmires of chaotic death: an excellent target for an ork Waaaagh!!!

The orks were showing more unity for some spontaneous reason. They spent less time fighting each other and were now hurling bellowing battlefleets of mammoth warships into every hostile planet. While Rarend sat here, thousands of ork invasions were playing out. Heroes fought against the green tide, fought and died, while the great Inquisitor Rarend sat here!

In the end, the once proud Imperial worlds were locked in a war of man against mutation and alien. In some places, mutant and human fought as one against orkish invaders. Two thousand years ago this would have been stopped, but not today. The inquisition was overworked. There were simply too few inquisitors to see to the blood-soaked Imperium. Not even Rarend knew all the details, but some of his peers spoke of Warmaster Ezekiel Abaddon uniting the forces of Chaos for an apocalyptic raid on Terra never seen since Horus.

There was no doubt the forces of Chaos were excited by the outbreak of one million genocidal wars being fought across the dying remains of the Imperium. Though Ultima Segmentum was all but gone, the savagery of these wars was generating enough negative emotion to excite the Chaos gods to new heights. Rarend heard stories of daemonic incursions all across the Imperium.

As if mutants and orks weren't enough.

And then there were the Tau…

SOMEWHERE IN SEGMENTUM OBSCURUS…

Afennor ducked down as an explosion pulverized the building he stood near. Tonnes of debris was thrown into the air, rising up and slashing down onto the ground with the killing power of the explosion that had taken them into the air. They clattered down onto the tortured earth of the planet's capitol. Falling rubble crushed bodies. Clouds of settling dust coloured to the shade of a tombstone coated every smear of dark crimson that lay in the city block. Layers of dust coated the soggy bottoms of craters blown in the middle of the road.

"Guns up! Out of the trenches!" sergeant Yuel Roshin barked, his bloody hand wiping gray powder that had settled in his beard. He looked out of the trench they huddled in. Afennor didn't think of the crumbly gauge they had carved into the naked road as a trench. It was a rip, a dusty wound slashed in the dying city to hasten its inevitable demise. The gauge was four meters deep, but with slanted edges to lie on. From beneath his flak jacket, Afennor could feel the rough skin of the ground on his thin chest. His cold, shaking fingers gripped the trigger of his lasgun unsteadily as he looked through the settling haze of misty dust that seemed to cover everything in a powdery film. He wiped his young face and wheezed. He wasn't healthy enough to cough.

Beside him, his school-mates whispered to one another fearfully while they looked out. He could not easily hear them over the gunfire and bursting shells that rocked the city. One explosion sounded nearby and shook Afennor's teeth. The boy looked through the haze and watched for the orks.

"Remember boys," segeant Yuel Roshin really did mean boys. Fifty years of constant warfare had taken its toll on the populace. It was said that no man here lived to see fifty, "remember...your fathers before you are watching." He swallowed and adjusted his helmet. Conscript-sergeants wore morbid black helmets with shades to hide their eyes. Boy-soldiers like Afennor didn't even get hats.

"I see them," squeaked Kainno, the youngest. He was only twelve. "I…I'm scared." Afennor could see them too.

Through the choking fog of dust were the glowing red eyes of several orks. The priests all declared that the Emperor himself had performed a miracle to illuminate the orkish eyes to make them easier to shoot at night. Afennor did not believe it was a blessing. Though you could see them coming, the sight of one thousand pairs of glowing red eyes coming at you was as horrifying as their warcry.

"WAAAAAAGH!!!" roared the orks with unnatural intensity. Afennor crouched down and plugged his ears. The closest ork could not have been closer than one hundred yards, but he could swear two orks were flanking him and shrieking their primitive scream directly into his ears. Everyone recoiled, even Yuel Roshin.

"Kill them!" Yuel Roshin screamed as he cracked shots into the oncoming orks. Afennor rose up to the lip of the trench with the rest of the boys and looked at the hunched silhouettes of the orks. They were coming, nine feet tall and waving two-handed axes. Afennor fired. The orks, fifty in all against sixty teenagers, barreled through the storm of hissing lasfire. One fell after ten bounding steps, then another crunched to the ground, its weathered body pierced and burned until it could stand no more. A third fell when they were halfway to the trench. A fourth fell nine steps later. It would be forty-six orks against Afennor and his friends.

"Run, run!" Mkell cried, throwing away his gun and sprinting away down the trench. Afennor was truly glad there was no commissar around. Every night, when he had found a corner of ruins to shelter his wasted body, he'd close his eyes and see the red spray that had jumped from his little brother when he'd tried fleeing. Afennor hated commissars.

More boys fled from the trench, sprinting into the surrounding ruins like rats from the light. Afennor's courage melted when he saw the gleaming ivory teeth on one of the incoming orks. That grin, beneath ember eyes, it would give even a guardsman a fright. Afennor paid no heed to the screams of Yuel Roshin.

"Back to the trenches!" he yelled to the fleeing boys. Afennor took a look over his shoulder. Two-thirds of his school-mates had fled the trench. The others, too scared to run, were cracking madly at the orks who numbered forty-five. They were seconds away from the trench.

"Affix bayonets!" Yuel Roshin shouted to the trench as he jumped out and jumped through a blown-out window in a nearby shop. Afennor scurried into the shadows, disappearing just as the orks reached the terrified boy-soldiers in the trench, the powered saw-teeth on their axes whirling hungrily. Afennor dashed through the shadowy alleyways, stepping over piles of rubble, crouching like a rat, his mind thinking of nothing but survival.

He turned the corner in the bombed-out alleyway and stumbled upon a dead ork. It was eight feet tall and lying half in the alley and half in the street. The cracking of nearby guns told Afennor that combat was near. Perhaps if he could find another unit of conscripts with them, he could slip in like he usually did after getting separated from his sergeant.

Peeking out, his war-weary eyes beheld a tight street, its road flanked by crumbling structures. Upon one was a simple paper poster.

"Kill the mutant wherever he is found!" it read in arrogant black letters. Dead orks littered the street, their monster bodies blown open and apart. Circular scorches were written across the walls.

"Tau," Afennor whispered. He knew the tau, those warrior savages. They lived to survive and thrived on killing others who threatened them.

"Don't let the prey get away!" they would howl as they flew into battle. The regimental commissar, the same one who shot Afennor's little brother, spoke of the tau with an uncommon hatred.

"They used to live in an empire. A damned parody of ours. It was deservedly eaten by the tyranids. So the tau parasites who escaped the extermination of their civilization migrated. They became a warrior society, one that lives off piracy and murder to fatten their maggoty bodies," the commissar had once said. "They're dying out fast. Good riddance I say."

Afennor held his breath as he saw a wave of orks run into view. They were the smaller ones with brighter skin, but their eyes glowed with an inner red light. They were snarling and barking, not at one another, but almost for the sake of doing so. Their huge guns were caked with decaying rust and oily stains. They looked more like dirty pipes than working firearms.

Then, with a warcry that Afennor had been told meant "for the Greater Good!" in the tau tongue, ten mechanized suits, ten feet tall, leapt from the surrounding buildings. Blue jets from their feet lifted them into the air. Their blocky humanoid, bodies plummeted down onto the orks, gleaming blades folding out of their wrists, adding to the long blades that festooned their steel carapace.

The tau warriors fell onto the orks, their blades lashing. Ork blood flew as the tau carved into them. Orks howled and fired randomly, hitting some of their own.

"WAAAAAGH!!!" Again Afennor doubled over as his ears were crushed by the sound. He straightened himself out only to feel a blade pressed against his throat. Beside him stood a tau warrior, a lithe alien carbine in one hand and a chainsword in the other. The latter had its teeth against Afennor's neck. The tau warrior himself was dressed as all tau infantry did.

Their suits were ugly. Since the tau existed as a migrating society held together only under a common ideology of the "greater good," they did not have any concerns for style or regulation. This one had a bulky suit, gunmetal coloured. A necklace of rotting ears, mostly orkish, rested around his neck. They looked like jerky. The tau's face was crossed by tattoos. Behind him stood four more tau. They wore helmets, which had been fashioned to resemble howling monsters. This was supposed to strike fear into the hearts of their enemies.

"Emperor, help me," he heard himself whisper.

"Gue'la larva," laughed the tau. "You're now part of the empire." He smiled, his lipless mouth twisted with malice. Before Afennor had a chance to reflect on his coming life in slavery, the tau removed his chainsword from Afennor's throat and beat him over the head with it. The boy blacked out.

…

Afennor opened his eyes. He was lying on his face on what felt like a grid of solid rust. He rolled his aching body over. Though he was missing his flak jacket and lasgun, he still wore his trousers and fatigues. The steel band he'd been carrying from around his middle finger was gone. So was his pocket-knife.

He sat inside a cavernous room, lit from the ground by orange lights that threw every little shadow up onto the walls. It was square shaped, and the walls looked forged out of enamel, pearly in colour. The middle of the room was dominated by a deep pit, square, and too deep to crawl from. It was filled with round cages, each carried a snarling, ember-eyed ork. They thrashed like the beasts they were at the bindings around their limbs, grasping their hands and looking furiously around for a weapon. Tending to the cages were four tau, still in their armor but without their sinister helmets.

Afennor himself sat inside a larger cage, spherical, and suspended by a chain from the ceiling. Should the chain he hung from be cut, then he would fall into the pit below. From this angle he could make out no more features of the chamber. Afennor sat up, his young mind spinning with fear and dread. Only then did he notice the other captive.

"Greetings, gue'la," rasped the naked tau across the cage. His frail body was seated in a dignified position, cross-legged and with his wire hands clasping bony knees. His sunken cheeks were bent into a delicate, warm smile and his staring eyes contained a visceral wisdom deep inside them. "You awaken at last." Afennor was surprised in many ways. He did not expect to see a tau in here, much less one that spoke low gothic, much less one that looked as dignified as this one. It was like seeing a ruffian atop the podium inside church.

"How long was I asleep?" Afennor asked. He was splitting hungry.

"I do not know. Time is too distant for me." The tau sighed tragically and shut his thin eyes. Afennor sat against the rounded edge of the cage while an agonized roar from a captured ork filled the air. As it was with orks, the beast's howl was louder than naturally possible. Afennor closed his eyes and plugged his ears. When he opened them again, he saw the tau hadn't moved.

"What are you here for?" Afennor asked.

"My fallen kinsmen came to my world and destroyed it. Thus dies one more jewel of our people. One last bastion of the ethereals," the tau replied. Afennor didn't understand. The tau sensed this, even without opening his eyes. "I am an ethereal. Tau like me once ruled the Tau Empire. But no more. Now we exist as exiles across the galaxy, keeping out small conclaves alive, while our twisted brethren bloody the stars." Afennor pointed to the tau below, who were prodding the orks with spears.

"You mean not all tau are like…"

"No. Tell me boy, have you ever heard of the Greater Good?" the ethereal opened his eyes in time to see Afennor nod. "Only the ethereals remember what it truly means. It is the philosophy of unity and peace. Repair every schism and the whole you have will be unbreakable. This was the philosophy of the Tau Empire. We were strong with it, and it served us well. Then the aliens who you humans call the tyranids came, and we scattered. My people fled west to the Farsight Enclaves. The leader there, you would know the leader by the name Commander Farsight. Farsight usurped our rule from there. Farsight corrupted the Greater Good into what it is known as today. Farsight taught my people to kill, Farsight taught us to steal, Farsight taught us to survive whatever the cost in blood may be…" The ethereal fell silent, knowing he was rambling.

Afennor nodded. NOW the fragile tau was describing the tau "Greater Good": their philosophy that they may do whatever they want to non-tau species to perpetuate themselves. Do small evils for the greater good! That was the teachings of the tau raiders.

"So far we have fallen." The tau lamented as the sound of a plasma gunshot echoed through the chamber. The pirates below were executing their captives. "Those so-called tau below take life for fun. A life lost, wasted forever, just for ten seconds of feeling powerful. I read back upon my people's fading memories and see what we were." He looked down at the pirates as they murdered the orks. "Perhaps it is better that we are dying out," he sighed.

"Why did they take you?" asked Afennor softly. Speaking to his new friend helped him cope with his caged state.

"Because we are ethereals. We are tau who do not fight. My kin who were corrupted by the teachings of Farsight hate that." The tau shook his head, eyes still on his depraved brethren. "I weep for my captors. I weep for them all."

Suddenly, a distant bell began to toil: a ring of solid brass, echoing to every corner of the chamber. The tau on the ground began howling to one another, drawing their alien weapons and rushing up the ladder that led out of the pit. They left behind them cages and cages of orks, their bodies still smoldering from plasma-fire.

"This ship is under attack," the ethereal sighed. "Perhaps my time has come." Afennor stood up and rattled the bars.

"We're free!" he laughed to himself. "We're going to be rescued!" The tau sighed darkly while Afennor laughed at the bars.

…

Brother Usoran of the Dark Angels looked out the window at the burning tau ship, at that lithe craft, its edges sharp, its body sleek, its general shape suggesting the brutal head of a battleaxe. Throughout it were holes, blasted by the cannons of the battle barge. Encountering and smiting it was a pleasant diversion to their trip to Macharia. In these dark days, Usoran welcomed any opportunity to destroy the Emperor's enemies.

'It is by the Emperor's grace that we could catch that vile ship. His will alone guided it from the warp and into the path of our ship,' Usoran thought, his ancient face smiling from beneath his helmet. Some of the tau's slaves were still alive. A tiny redemption, but even tiny victories were welcome.

"Brother Usoran," said the solemn voice of Brother Rossus from behind him on the bridge. "We have the only xenos survivor." Usoran turned away from the window and strode to the three Astartes who stood behind him, their bodies still clad in full power armor. Rossus stood in front of them, while behind him stood two battle-brothers of the Dark Angels chapter. Each held the upraised arm of a slouching tau in their fists, though Usoran knew only one was needed. Their captive was old, naked, and frail. One blow from Usoran's boot would break the xenos like a tsunami could break a sapling.

"Space marines," the tau rasped in exhaustion, "I am no pirate…" if dust could talk, its voice would sound like what this tau spoke.

"It is not worth your time brothers. Kill it," Usoran dismissively spat. The tau chuckled darkly.

"Idiot human. You tread the path to damnation. With your war and hatred you will only kill yourself." The tau raised his head. "Your Imperium needed the Greater Good, the true Greater Good. We tried to show you love, we tried to show you peace. We searched the galaxy for as far as our engines could take us and searched every world we could for a single thread or crumb of sanity. We tried to show an insane galaxy, and your insane empire, that you did not have to shackle yourselves and your children to the torture-rack!" The tau's voice belied its frame. Now he spoke with the strength of a priest of true Imperial teachings.

"And in the end…" the naked tau rasped, strength draining from him faster than water fleeing from an overturned cup, "…all the galaxy showed us was that we were the insane ones for believing the galaxy could be saved." The marines dragged the babbling tau off. "In a crazed universe, only the sane men are mad…" One of the Dark Angels dragging him broke his neck.

"Continue to Macharia," Usoran instructed, turning to Rossus. "Send the human survivors to Inquisotor Rarend."


	4. The fall of Commorragh

Afennor remembered there being a loud noise, then there was nothing. He'd probably gone unconscious, but when he awoke he was sprawled out across an examination table, staring deep into the wrinkled skin of an eyeless face. He cried out and tried to swat at the face, which was attached to a metal neck, but could not move his wrists. Heavy metal restraints locked his wrists to one spot. There was something wrapped around his forehead, holding his head still.

"Do not be alarmed, I have not come to hurt you. If that was not so, you would not have awoken," promised a voice in the chamber. The neck that the eyeless servitor's head sat upon wheeled away from Afennor and a man in a black robe stepped over to lean over the table. His face was mostly shadowed by his hood but the unmistakable symbol of the Inquisition was emblazoned onto his chest.

'An inquisitor!' Afennor feared them as much as the tau. Was he going to be tortured? What had he done? He didn't want to be tortured!

"You were a captive aboard a tau pirate ship," the inquisitor explained. "I had to examine you for signs of alien taint." He held up a phial of blood. "You seem clean of internal heresy. My servitor was examining you for injury." With a hiss, the bindings on Afennor's wrists loosened. He sat up and shook his aching head. He'd received quite a blow during his rescue.

"Who are you?" Afennor asked, taking a short glance around the medical chamber, at the servitors, REAL servitors, tending the machinery.

"I am not obliged to give my name. But when you address me you will call me Inquisitor Rarend of the Ordo Xenos," the hooded man replied. "What might your name be?"

"Afennor, I was a conscript fighting the orks on…"

"Afennor, that's a good name. I'd put your age at…fifteen and three months." Afennor nodded. He was right, even about the "three months" part. He thought about asking him how he knew, but to a hooded man who carried a phial of your blood, it was perhaps best not to ask.

"Did you save me?"

"The space marines of the Dark Angels chapter saved you." Afennor took a moment to get over the shock of the news. It was like being told the Emperor himself had done the deed. He'd only seen space marines as tiny plastic figures that young boys on his home planet played games with. Real space marines were literally legends made flesh.

"Can I see one?" Afennor was disheartened by the inquisitor's laugh.

"No boy, this is my ship. You were handed over to me by the Dark Angels, along with the other three humans that the tau had captured."

"Where are we going?"

"I am going to an inquisitorial fortress to make my report. I will drop you off with the local PDF who can make a home for you. Your return isn't worth the resources boy, you will never see your home planet again." Afennor fell onto the examination table, sobbing.

Rarend paid the boy no more attention than he would give a chair he was not using. He gave his servitors orders to restrain the boy if he grew violent and walked outside to continue working on his report.

"Inquisitor Rarend?" beeped a voice in his earpiece. It was the bridge, or more particularly, one of his henchmen. "Great inquisitor?" the tone was hurried and panting, like a man who had just run. It was the tone of urgency.

"What is it?" Rarend lazily asked.

"You must be up here, with all speed. There is something outside you must have a look at." Rarend did not have time for anomalies. He was in a hurry to make his report, the inquisition would have his head if it was a minute late. When shepherding man, one cannot afford to blink a moment longer than necessary, for the tiniest fault could be split open by a heretic's determined hands. Especially in these deathly years.

Rarend was a patient man, but he ran like a frothing maniac, the whips of his henchman's tone thrashed at his heels. Had they entered warp space yet? No, they hadn't, Rarend did not recall giving the order, ergo there was no possible way the crew had done so. This merely meant that the ship was not about to become feeding grounds for the surreal horrors of the warp. What then was it that stirred up fear in his henchman?

Rarend burst through the door to the bridge where eight crewmen stood, looking dumbly out the heavy crystal window at the veil of space outside. Their floppy uniforms and mechanical implants designated them as typical ratings, but they stood about with the idle posture of palace guards. Beyond unacceptable for ratings in the duty of an inquisitor. Rarend would discipline them later. The disobedience of his crew was upstaged by what he saw outside when he saw what they were looking at.

"What, by the throne, are those?" he asked.

...

Deep in the webway, in the Dark City...

Archon Ralreth cackled as he prodded his splinter rifle through the bars of the cage that his raider tugged. The human inside it, or the human-like creature that had tendrils for fingers, screamed at him. Its voice was like a homunculus' blade driving sparks across the surface of a sheet of steel. It was shrill to the ear and sharp to the mind. It made even a depraved field like Ralreth cringe. It, and the whole lot of slobbering monster-humans they had rounded up during their raid, could scream in such pleasing ways, but there was a limit to what Ralreth's ears could endure.

'It is good to be home,' Ralreth thought as he looked at the delicious despair etched in fear across the warped faces of the monstrous humans in the cage. 'Such fun we will have together,' he thought with a wire-thin grin that had been the final thing more than one damned victim had seen.

Above him, in all directions, was the shadowy city of Commorragh. Looming black towers stretched up into the air, as well as down from an incandescent ceiling. In this place, up was wherever your head pointed. Murders of Dark Eldar ships swooped on howling white jets amidst the razor canopies of the towers. White lit windows stared at him like the cat-eyes of a beast of shadow. It was always nice to see the fresh looks of fear the new playthings took on when they first saw the place. It was a mixture of a child's wonder (indeed, sometimes that was literally true) and the look of terror in the face of a dying soldier.

'There are less children among the humans nowadays,' Ralreth thought in anger. Two-thousand years ago, when the archon was only a warrior, he truly had enjoyed messily slaughtering them in front of their parent's eyes. He looked at the newest catch. 'There are less humans among the humans nowadays,' he thought, 'they're all being replaced by these…things.' Female human-monsters made poor chamber decorations.

"Isckavinel, Jaran," screamed the archon to two of his black armored henchmen, "you know what to do!" He stalked down the gold-plated deck of his raider while the portal to Commorragh: a shimmering rift in the threads of reality behind him, closed its lips and vanished into oblivion, thus sealing the fates of the inhabitants of all five cages around him. Five raiders held the cages aloft, both above and below the towers of Commorragh. Two of his most trusted henchmen went to the back of the raider where the cage was attached. They began to loosen the attachings on the cages so they could be sent to the Black Heart Cabal.

Ralreth himself walked down the stairs of the raider to the deck below, his weary body in desperate need of rest within the depths of his fortress. Around him, warriors drew back, not daring to stand in their archon's way. Even as the raid was reaching its dusk Ralreth was still eyeing each man and woman he passed for signs of treachery, even a subtly jerk of the hand or flinch of the eye. Such vigilance had ensured his supremacy for over six centuries.

Ralreth looked idly up at the towers above his head and noticed a thick formation of one thousand ravens, those sleek black fighters, streaking past the lanes of Dark Eldar ships. They were followed close behind by several dark creations of the cabal's armories. They were like great black bats built of metal with eyes of red ember and cannons on their leathery wings. Strange.

Ralreth thought nothing more of it as he stepped to the front of his raider and approached the warrior who operated the communicator.

"Call in my ship," Ralreth whispered to the warrior. He wheeled around to the deck of his raider, which was choked under the armored feet of over a dozen slender Dark Eldar figures. "We're going home at last!" he bellowed to his warriors. A screeching cheer rose from the deck as weapons fired jubilantly into the air and daggers were waved. They all knew what that meant.

"Ralreth, my archon," the warrior with the communicator said as a huge flight of hundreds of ravagers and raiders soared overhead, amongst it darted the sharp, flashing shapes of reaver jetbikes. Ships that were passing idly between buildings were almost dashed apart on their hulls. Ralreth took the communicator and held it up to his ear.

"No response from your fortress, archon," the humble warrior blubbered out, shrinking back. Ralreth squinted at him from the slits in his helmet and knocked the communicator against the side of the raider. He held it up to his ear.

"Hello?" asked Ralreth to the little machine as a flight Dark Eldar warships soared past his raiders. Ralreth hadn't even noticed that everything was headed in the same direction.

"Hello? Anybody?" cried a terrified voice from the other end of the communicator. Weakling.

In the background, Ralreth could hear weapons shooting and screams.

"What is the meaning of this?" Ralreth asked lazily.

"Commorragh is under attack."

Ralreth processed those words in his defiled brain. For the centuries of his life he'd always known Commorragh to be invincible. It had never come under attack, ever. But who would have the blind audacity to confront the true children of the stars, inside their own lair? Souls would be his when this was over.

"Archon?" asked one of the warriors on Ralreth's raider. He raised his head in time to see a pale mist swooping through the city, though kilometers away, he could see the tendrils of the billowing, charging fog devour everything in its path. Ship, fortress, tower, fleet, everything.

"Go," Ralreth said, his black heart now white with terror. He turned his eyes to the nearest portal. "Get us out of Commorragh!" He looked in terror at the mist, advancing at a breakneck pace. Ralreth flew his raider away from the oncoming mist, looking in vain for a portal to the open world. Some webway rift, some hole they could navigate, anything.

He spotted a portal, one that led to a different part of the webway. Whatever that mist was, it could not follow them through the whole of the webway! He turned once more to look at the mist.

It was close enough, and within it he could see leviathan-shadows. One of them came forth to be briefly seen before vanishing back into the murky depths of the mist. Ralreth knew the creature, and it was one of the few foes he refused to fight. It was a tyranid hiveship.

He spotted a portal out of Commorah, but it was too distant. Not even his raider could outrun the mist, or the hivefleet he now knew lurked within it.

Far behind him, billions of Dark Eldar were being devoured by the skittering, churning legions of the tyranids. Billions of creatures, outnumbering the defenders thousands to one, taking no prisoners. Rippers flooded through the fortresses of the cabals, pouring into slave pits and devouring all they found within. Dark Eldar who had always fancied themselves the hunters were now the hunted. All flights of Dark Eldar ships were broken by the droneships or blasted to acidic ruin by the tyranids biological attacks. The mist, which was made of innumerable spores, choked and blinded even the best bred of the Dark Eldar. They, who had devoured the souls of the innocent for 13000 years were now being consumed in turn. Everywhere, paper-thin defenses succumbed to the relentless assault.

It was hopeless.

…

"What are those?" demanded Rarend again, pointing. He pointed at the asteroid in from of them. Upon it was an alien arch of obsidian-black stone, no doubt eldar in origin. Beneath its leaning stone was a shimmering circle of bright light. Protruding from the light were dozens of long whipping tendrils of flesh, hundreds of meters long. They were squeezing a long ship, painted night-purple, its general shape suggesting a hooked spear. The ship was collapsing, splitting painfully into two under the squeeze of the tendrils.

"They…they look dangerous," one astonished rating squeaked.

"Permission to fire, inquisitor?"

"Break that arch," Rarend instructed, sure he knew that he beheld an entrance to the webway. He did not hear the guns howl, but saw the blossom of orange and the collapse of both the arch and the extinguishing of the light. The tendrils continued squeezing the ship for a few moments until they finally went limp, though still wrapped around the alien ship. The vanishing light had left them without an owner. Where once Rarend had beheld the tendrils of an alien beast he now saw dead serpents.

"Orders?" one rating asked.

"Return to your posts and take us in," Rarend replied, now entranced by what he saw. It was as much his duty to investigate this as it was to deliver his report. "Those look like they belonged to a tyranid hiveship." He shook his head, knowing he had made a discovery. "How did the tyranids get into the webway?"

The wrecked alien craft grew nearer.


	5. Amongst the Eldar

Rarend's ship came alongside the wrecked alien ship and injected a boarding crew on board. This first expendable wave risked their lives to ensure that neither Dark Eldar nor tyranid lurked within the immediate hallways of the derelict ship. Once they'd ensured that no harm could come to a surveying team, they gave the all-clear and the next wave came on. Not soldiers, but scientists and learners. Foremost among them, and directing them like a brain, was Rarend.

The interior of the alien ship was blackened through and through. Obsidian hallways rife with the bloody, splattered remains of tyranids and Dark Eldar presented little to the experienced inquisitor beyond another ugly sight to mar his scarred memory. His henchmen trundled along, scattering into survey teams of three, each guarded by a loyal gunman in Rarnend's employment. All they wanted was the simplest piece of data to lead them to answer Rarend's question.

Rarend stalked through the unlit hallways of the alien craft. It was like trudging through a liquid nightmare. He saw nothing but black ivory walls wherever he looked that was not covered by the gnawed remains of xenos. Corridor after corridor, corpse after corpse, empty report after empty report from each of his survey teams.

'Perhaps there is nothing the alien can teach me,' Rarend thought. Technically he was not trying to learn from the aliens: they were all the deserved piles of dead meat that they deserved to be. Filthy non-human aliens! Rarend hated them all!

"Great inquisitor," crackled the voice of one of the surveys in Rarend's ear. "We have movement in region 80." Rarend's mind formed a map of the ship and recalled which of the grids and blocks they'd divided the ships into had been christened region 80. It was one of the regions closest to the split point of the ship. Rarend clicked some buttons on his wrist.

"We go," replied the voices of the gunmen in Rarend's ear. "For the Inquisition." Rarend feared some survivor of the Dark Eldar crew as he walked into one of the midnight rooms of the ship.

Inside, he could see a metal table and a chair parked next to it. The room may once have been the study for one of the warped minds of the Dark Eldar pirates, but it had now been turned into a charnel. The shredded bodies of two Dark Eldar lay slumped in the corner, their guts hanging from rents in their armor and their guns lying uselessly on the floor. By the amount of blood near one of the bodies, Rarend guessed one of them had taken a hideously long amount of time to die. He felt no sympathy for such filth. Rarend stepped over the body of their murderer, draped across the floor like a rug.

Rarend had studied these creatures in the fortress and hunting them down had been the bread and butter of his early years as a Xenos inquisitor. Its fetid hide was the colour of rotting skin, its arms numbered four, its head was elongated and beastly but far too human for Rarend's liking. The talons of the monster alone could give it away: there could be no mistaking those three-fingered claws. A genestealer. This one was shredded almost in two by Dark Eldar weapons.

"Status report," Rarend demanded to the team that had contacted him from region 80. Rarend felt his hand clench onto the plasma pistol he carried by his side during incursions like this. Its flaming barrel had been the blessed death of twelve aliens and two humans since the day it had entered his holy service.

"Inquisitor!" the man said, though in awe rather than alarm. "Inquisitor, it is…it's an Astartes!"

At the same moment, Rarend saw the genestealer move. He shot it in the skull with a bolt of inquisitorial-grade plasma. The head burst apart, but the body still moved, or rather, shifted, like ripples across water. Rarend cared little for this and ordered his companions to destroy the corpse and study the remains.

"An Astartes?" asked Rarend as he hurried alone through the bloody halls of the ship. "By the Emperor! Of what chapter?"

The Emperor's Space Marines were rare indeed these days. Their geneseed mutated, their numbers spent by eons of war. Only fifteen chapters remained in service, with the rest absorbed into them to keep these chosen fifteen at full strength. Even a humble henchman should know the chapter by name.

"I do not know," replied the henchman. "He is standing at the end of a hallway, conversing with your soldiers. He is alone.

Rarend had heard stories of men getting lost in the Warp for thousands of years. Perhaps this space marine was one? Whatever the case, Rarend would be rewarded with splendid honours for the rescue of an Astartes. Perhaps a prisoner aboard this ship?

Rarend reached the intersecting hallways where the henchman and Rarend's soldiers were. Sure enough, a blessed space marine of the Emperor's finest stood lorded in one of the hallways, towering over the five of Rarend's before him like a cliff. Rarend noticed two things immediately.

First, he noticed the marine was not clad in the modern MK X Avenger power armor, with its extra layer of thickened adamantine and the skull facemask to memorialize the hundreds of chapters that had been lost when the geneseeds began to fail. This man wore an ancient suit of Mark II armor from the Great Crusade!

Secondly, Rarend noticed the colours of this marine matched no surviving chapter. He was armored brown with a shimmering gold trim. The marine carried no weapon. Rarend could not see the man's coat-of-arms on his shoulder pads. Instantly, Rarend drew his plasma pistol.

"Though I would only find it a strong curiosity to find a Space Marine on a slaughtered xenos ship, I'm finding it a threat when the marine does not wear Imperial colours," Rarend said as he strode through his soldiers and dismissed them until only he and the marine filled the hall.

"Lower your pistol, I mean you no harm," the marine replied. "It has been too long since I have been this close." He sighed and Rarend scowled.

"Explain yourself, you may look like a space marine but there are issues I will see answered, now!" Rarend shook his pistol. "Are you alone?"

"I've forgotten the meaning of the word. I've never been alone for thirteen-thousand years," replied the marine. "Where can I find the current masters of the Imperium of Man, or does the Emperor still rule?" Rarend bore his teeth, now sensing an alien ruse. Such blasphemy! How dare they imitate the Emperor's most holy? Rarend needed more proof before he could pull the trigger. He looked around him for signs of the enemy.

"Your name, your chapter, your company, by order of the Inquisition," Rarend demanded. "Prepare to apprehend him," Rarend whispered into his vox-piece. The soldiers in the hallway behind him readied their weapons.

"The Hornet Legion does not answer to the demands of men nor do the enslavers," replied the space marine. "The enslavers are poised to strike your civilization dead. Bring me to Terra, man of the Inquisition. I command you as Primarch of the Hornet Legion…" Rarend shot off the "space marine's" head. It exploded in a burst of chitin and green slime. The body fell.

'Some new tyranid organism?' Rarend thought in sickness as he looked at the corpse. He reached down and touched the armor. Chitin! Not metal! It was a space marine built of bone…

"Hahahaha!" the cackling filled the air. From cracks and slits in the ship oozed in a puddle of liquefied tyranid flesh. Rarend was spellbound as he watched it congeal into the shape of a space marine. Its colours changed, the flesh hardened to bone, distinct body-parts formed. From alien slime rose yet another counterfeit space marine!

'The rippling genestealer, it was melting,' Rarend recalled. 'It must be reincarnated from the flesh of melted tyranids.'

"My name is Apollyon: Primarch of the Hornet Legion, lord of the enslavers, and the herald of a new age. By that authority, I command you to take me to Terra," the space marine boomed. Rarend was too dumbfounded as to how the tyranid could speak Low Gothic and know the definitions of words such as "primarch". He had to survive, the Ordo Xenos must know about this!

"Sir," crackled a voice in his ear, "this is the bridge. We have more vessels approaching." Rarend was too entranced by this marine to care.

"You are a tyranid," Rarend replied as he caught a glimpse of the emblem on Apollyon's shoulder pad. It was a stylized hornet's head done in black upon a white cross made of four insect wings.

"A what?" asked Apollyon. He fell silent and looked at the ceiling. "The insufferable eldar approach," he muttered before looking back at Rarend. "Would you disobey the orders of a Primarch?"

"You are no Primarch, xeno!" Rarend shouted as he shot the creature through the chest. The hole bored right through the marine but it did not fall down.

"He really did it then. He really made mankind forget us all," Apollyon sighed as the next shot claimed his head.

Rarend didn't have time to examine his second kill and wonder where Apollyon would be reincarnated next. Suddenly, the air around him rippled and churned as thick, many-armed warriors materialized around him. He drew rapier but had it cut in two by a leaping eldar blade. The shouts of his soldiers was lost in a roar of alien weaponry.

The last thing Rarend saw was the helmeted white face of an eldar warrior in front of him. The arch rising from its elongated black helmet designated it as an eldar witch.

"Come with us," sang a voice to him as he was pulled into the warp.

…

Rarend could not tell where he was. It was like a cocoon built of the stuff that teeth grew from, equally white with equal texture, but lit with a warm blue light and wrapping around him, leaving a single centimeter of space between him and its hold. He did not remember how he was put here, only that he'd been there for hours or perhaps days. He cursed the Eldar with every breath he took. Vile, aloof, and arrogant as they were, he had so far been lucky enough to avoid contact with them. Yet their cowardice and guile had served them well. Now he was their prisoner, as so many aliens before had been his prisoner.

His drooping hood covered his eyes from the light of the blasphemous prison when it got too intense, as dull as it was.

"Awaken, human," said a throaty but still gracefully sinister eldar voice. It was a male, the lack of a sing-song quality in it left no doubts to that. As the voice spoke, the cocoon cracked open and revealed his prison to the inquisitor's eyes. He was prepared to accept that he was aboard an eldar ship, but when he looked around and beheld a chamber with light blue walls lined with multiple flame-shaped seats at which sat eldar crewman at their crystalline controls, Rarend realized he was possibly on the bridge. There were no windows so it was difficult to tell anything. The eldar who had spoken to him was a tall, menacing warrior in a lofty, jagged orange and red suit. He sported a long helm with a pair of ridged crests rising from wither side of his helmet. For the shortest moment, Rarend thought he was beholding a fabled avatar of the eldar's war god.

"Damned alien, you will find me easier to interrogate when I am dead," Rarend snarled, stepping out of his prison and up to the imposing eldar warrior. He didn't seem to be missing anything except his pistol. "I am…"

"…Worthless to you," finished the eldar. Rarend was taken, aback, for that was what he was about to say. "Human arrogance is the same as I remember it. But I do not seek information. For what could you possibly know that I do not already?" Rarend frowned. "Perhaps you feel uncomfortable in this place? Shall we take a walk, human?" Rarend realized he had no choice and strode down a hall that led from the chamber, this alien at his side like a friend.

"What…"

"What I want I your help," the eldar replied before Rarend could finish.

"Never."

"Your path crossed with the path of one who is one with the Hive Mind of the tyranids, did it not?" the eldar asked casually. He led Rarend into a chamber. It was small and contained a circle of pillows on the ground. Six orange-armored eldar warriors sat in meditation on these pillows. They were dismissed by the one Rarend spoke to.

"Leave us. I seek solitude with the human," the helmeted eldar commanded in the eldar language.

"You cannot break me, eldar," Rarend said in the eldar tongue, though rather crudely. The eldar all laughed at him as they filed out of the room, leaving him alone with the helmeted one.

"And still you believe that I interrogate you?" the helmeted one asked. "Are you unconcerned with your Imperium? The Hive Fleets have entered the webway. If they understand how to use them, they will be able to strike from every webway gate there is in the galaxy. Your frail Imperium would be swept away like sand in a torrent."

"I will…"

"You will not listen to my lies? My farseer has told me that you stumbled across the human mind that joined with the Hive Mind. The look on your face tells me this is true." The helmeted one sat down on a pillow. "Lie or truth? What was he?"

"You are interrogating me," Rarend spat. He would have tried strangling the eldar if he wasn't wearing a helmet. The eldar laughed as if he knew what he was thinking.

"Whoever he is, he is an ancient being indeed, a scientist or perhaps a great explorer, but as folly as you no matter the…case." Rarend realized he had thought of the person's identity: the counterfeit Astartes who claimed to be a primach named Apollyon.

"Apollyon," the eldar said, tasting the word. "Apollyon. Interrogating you has proven easy, Rarend." Rarend moved his hands to strangle himself, but the eldar was upon him far faster than he thought possible. "Primarch of the Hornet Legion? So that is what became of the man. My people had extensive contact with him and his brown-armored warriors. After he disappeared, the Imperium forgot about him. But we did not, for it was he who violated our craftworlds and stole our knowledge of things like the enslavers." The alien backed off from Rarend. "Your Emperor sought to rule the galaxy. To his butchers, that translated to scourging us from it. I ask you human, who are the savages? Apollyon inflicted wounds on us that have never healed."

"Thus is the fate of all the enemies of man," Rarend boasted.

"You arrogant…we stand on the threshold of the final days and you boast of your…I have never met a fool such as you," the eldar said in disbelief. "We go, even now, into the Eye of Terror."

"What?"

"The ending days will come in two strokes, so our farseers predict. The first will be the struggle for humanity's survival, for without humanity in the Imperium, there will be no one left to fight Chaos. The second will be the strike on Terra itself, where Chaos will finally be defeated," the eldar said casually.

"You lie…"

"I have seen it," the eldar said. "But fate cannot play out if the tyranids get to Terra first."

"What does the Eye of Terror have to do with this?" cried Rarend in horror. The alien would not lie, not about the Eye of Terror.

"It is our rallying grounds. We all must converge upon the Crone World of Crianorhas. From there, the pieces will be ready to play the great game," the eldar rose his masked face to the ceiling, "of Rhana Dhandra." Rarend recognized the eldar term for their race's last stand against Chaos.

"You are insane, not on…"

"Have you ever heard of the Black Library?" asked the eldar. "Within it, there exists the knowledge of what needs to be done in order to fool to Chaos gods. We will be like a shadow in the dark: silent, unseen and unfelt. We will stand under their noses with this knowledge and never be seen. Then, we can begin the final war." The eldar looked at Rarend. "Though it pains me to rescue the Imperium which has done us so much harm, it would seem that the death of the Hive Fleets will bring us closer to the death of Chaos too."

"But…" Rarend found himself believing the alien. He would be scourged for the sin when he returned to the Inquisition. "How can the dark masters of Chaos reach Terra? The Imperium may be overrun with orks and mutants and other savage aliens, but our holy capitol is well defended by a steel ring of worlds. And the chapters of the Astartes and the Inquisition. The Eye Of Terror is far away from Holy Terra, the Emperor wills it so." Rarend shook his head. "It would take an eon to break our defenses. And there are no holes in it now." The eldar laughed for the first time.

"Sometimes, even I forget how short-sighted your kind can be," the eldar said. "What would you say if you knew that a great rift in real space is blossoming very close to Terra? A new Eye of Terror; within striking distance of your Emperor, a corridor for Abaddon to lead the daemon primarchs and every Chaos lord and daemon prince as well as the vile legions of the Warp, right into the Imperial Palace?" Rarend scoffed. A new Eye of Terror? Fool.

"I would tell the source of this lie that it is mad with stupidity and purge such heretical thoughts from my mind. Then I would continue in the Emperor's light, doing his works," Rarend replied. The eldar nodded.

"Very well," he said softly. "We are going to the Eye of Terror now. We will be there in a few minutes."

"Impossible. Even with your webway, we are still in Segmentum Pacifi…" Rarend began.

"Did I not tell you about knowledge in the Black Library barely a minute ago? Have you forgotten already?"

Suddenly, everything went grey. Rarend felt like he had just jumped into a cloud.

…

Far away in the realm of the warp, the immaterium, deep in a maze created of mortal dreams, a great malevolent entity whose name was Tzeench contemplated its fate. The days of the troublesome Imperium were coming to an end. These days had two outcomes. One was the eternal supremacy of daemonkind. The other was the end of Chaos. Tzeench knew he would have to scheme as never before. As he looked around him at his realm, he noticed something he had foreseen for one thousand years: everything looked smaller. Ambition, plotting, hope, and schemes were not rife. In this time of ending, there was little room for ambition in a galaxy full of death. Nurgle would be benefitting. However, Tzeench was the architect of fate and knew exactly what needed to happen to achieve a paradise of daemonkind across the galaxy. It would be utopia of madness, where trillions of undying souls of helpless mortals would be bound to a million daemon worlds, never dying, but always suffering, their emotions feeding the daemons for all time. Tzeench knew exactly how to bring this nightmare about, and it would begin with Abaddon's raid on Terra.

Suddenly, the future looked foggy. Tzeench squinted at the future and tried to clear the mist away with a flick of a fan-like hand. He blew on the future and tried to wipe away the mist. He shook the future, trying to shake away the mist. This had never happened before. Something was wrong with time. For the first time in an eternity, Tzeench didn't know what was going to happen, and then something else happened: something he should have foreseen, but did not. His maze grew a little bit smaller.

He could almost hear Nurgle laughing.


	6. The Last Fifteen Chapters

The lashing acidic rain fell from the fat clouds of Necromunda. Descending in a curtain of water, dense as a flow from an open tap, lethal as the kiss of an open flame, and swifter in its delivery of misery than a terminal famine. From the black sky of the soot-clouded night it fell, having fallen all day and for most of the moonless, starless night, showing no signs of stopping or slowing down. Mountains of candles, that's what those great city-structures looked like. To a man on the muddy ground, they would be more like a wall of shadow and pinprick lights: they were so big that their edges were too far distant for someone on the ground to spot. Were it not from the lights of the towering hives, the rain would not even be visible. Nothing would be visible without the lights of the hives.

That was why the defenders of Necromunda needed their spotlights. From covered positions on the ground, around the hives, long lances of solid white light shot out towards the advancing warplanes, lighting up all the millions of drops of rain that passed through them.

They swarmed forwards, in vast sieges of huge dark shapes. The lights passed across their dark forms, only to pass them by and leave them in shadow to reveal yet more incoming fleets. Marauders, all of them, but painted grey and inscribed with vile runes of Chaos and piloted by heretics.

As the droning swarm came into range, the cannons opened fire. Orange orb-shaped explosions erupted around them, reducing the spotlights to a redundant decoration. Each explosion threw light across the invaders' massive droning formations. The dark, staring insignia of the Iron Warriors was periodically illuminated along each of the incoming planes.

Colonel Haidness smiled to himself as one of the traitor marauders exploded into a miniature sun. Pieces of flaming debris showered down from it, leaving flaming trails of smoke in their wake, giving the dusty cloud a sharp appearance. A second marauder was wheeling down to the ground, out of control, its portside wing amputated by a well-placed hit. It careened into the ground and exploded, its crew still onboard.

'A lonely death,' Haidness thought, his seven-fingered hand grasping his magnoculars through his acid-proof glove. He lowered the magnoculars and pressed a hand onto the vox-operator. He was a brutish man, with acid-proof skin made of some thick rubbery material, like a squid. His eyes were swollen shut, thus making him a very good listener.

"Contact 5th battery. Fire coordinates: 7-1-0 20 degrees northeast," Haidness recited. The man gibbered the orders into his vox-caster. Haidness watched as another marauder was claimed by the Emperor's guns. It crashed to the ground a flaming meteor. Three more were on their way down before it exploded in a jagged heap.

From his operations platform in the middle of the miles of trenches that surrounded the whole hive, Haidness could see the marauders had come close enough to pick out individually through the strobe lighting created by the flashing bursts of anti-air shells. The regiment he was in command of rushed all around him: those guardsmen who could not prove themselves useful against the bombers retreated into the tunnels along the trenches while those that were manned their posts and fought like daemons.

One tiny section of the defenses, one tiny part was all Haidness saw. But tens of thousands of men from the Imperial Guard and the Necromunda PDF stood beside him as brothers against the Iron Warriors and their heretic legions. While the off-worlder guardsmen casually referred to the enemy as mutants, the locals used other, less discriminatory words. PDF troopers were all that Haidness saw as he looked around him: manning guns and preparing themselves.

"Colonel," the vox-operator asked him from his chair, shouting over the guns, "all other sectors report no contact." The rebels were attacking one small point. Who knew why? It was said that the traitor Astartes on Necromunda were siege masters. Decoding the unfathomable laws of siege were not what Haidness had been entrusted by his governor to do.

"And?" Haidness watched the bombers roar over their heads. Whispers of prayer were spoken and some guns were fired as troops tried to flee their posts. Haidness saw a flaming wreck of a marauder crash into the trenches, killing scores of PDF in its inferno-death. "Here they come." Haidness looked through his goggled eyes at the hazy shadows of the marauders, now over their heads. Dozens were going down in fire but there were others. Hundreds. Would their murderous bombs find their targets among the hive or Haidness' men? Unfortunately, the colonel knew his enemy was too smart to waste his bombs on the hive.

Suddenly, a droning cluster of ten of the marauders burst apart, showering the others with fluttering debris. Ten more burst apart elsewhere, then elsewhere. In groups of ten, fully half the enemy planes had met death. Their careful formations collapsed as the sleek, whistling shapes of Astartes gunships lashed through them, their mighty guns wreaking havoc on the traitors' formations. Marauders went down riddled with holes, marauders went down with clipped wings, more yet exploded as the gunships fired missiles into them. He counted nine gunships in total: dark green.

A deafening cheer rose from the throats of the PDF while more traitors died. The mutant troopers leapt in jubilation, chanting praises to the Astartes and the Emperor, some firing weapons into the air. Fools. Haidness knew they were already dead. Too many marauders had lived. Their bombs were falling even as they were ripped apart…

…

The thunderhawk touched noisily down onto the night-shrouded trenches of the Necromunda PDF. With a grinding hiss, the hatch yawned down. The mutants around the thunderhawk shielded their eyes as ivory light flooded from the opened hatchway. When they looked, they beheld battle-brother Usoran and two of his brothers-in-arms. The three great giants stepped off and into the trenches. The bombers were gone and the thunderhawks were all touching down around Usoran's own ship.

Usoran cringed behind his helmet as the troopers flooded him and his brothers. While large parts of their trenchline lay in ruin and thousands of men lay dead or dying, screaming in fear and pain as the acidic rain ate away at their exposed organs, roasting them in a chemical bath, these degenerate humans were flocking like worshippers to a messiah. That was not the only reason why he was disgusted. They were mutants, all of them. All wore the Imperial Aquilla on their breasts. Some wore the swords of officers at their waists. It was fitting for their whole bodies to be sheathed in acid-proof suits and hoods. He didn't need the flaming wrecks of PDF guns and traitor marauders to see their cheerful eyes behind their goggles. It was like watching a daemon laugh to see a happy mutant. It was like laughing with the daemon to know that the mutant was happy to see you.

"Beware the alien, the mutant, the heretic," muttered Usoran as he plowed through the crowd like a clipper, his two brothers following him. The scene was duplicated eight times as the other eight thunderhawks disgorged their inhabitants. Two hundred dark angels: the whole force committed to hunting the fallen.

"First Macharia and now Necromunda?" asked Brother Abdis.

"So the clues lead. He is near," Usoran replied. "The Cypher has not gone so far in so long."

"Do you think it's time?" asked Abdis. Usoran spared the brother-marine his answer. Not even Usoran wanted to consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, the time had come. Perhaps, in Usoran's lifetime, they would know whose side the Cypher was truly on. Usoran had always believed the Cypher was a traitor at heart.

"If the Emperor allows it, then it is so," Usoran told his brother-marine as they stepped through the trenches towards the hive, over dead mutants and through live ones. He would already see the blue ghost of a marine being teleported into being upon the flaming ruin of a flak turret.

"What joke is this?" asked brother Melch as Usoran, his two escorts, and all the other Dark Angels from the thunderhawks reached the marine: a warrior being sent to them from the hive's defenders.

He was a tall man, even for an Astartes. His red hair was drawn into a ponytail and his face wild with a beard. His aged face was scarred many times while his teeth were pointed and beastly. From his grey terminator armor he wore a ragged pelt. He gripped a rune-encrusted axe in one fist. He was the only man here who did not wear a helmet or hood. The burning rain fell off his skin without any discomfort.

"Space Wolf?" asked a few of the younger battle-brothers.

"Quiet," Usoran said to them. The Imperium could not have any infighting amongst its chapters, not in these dying days.

"Late again," the Space Wolf laughed.

"I was expecting to be greeted by someone else," Usoran said. "Is it not the Imperial Fists who garrison Necromunda?" The Space Wolf did not flinch when one of the Dark Angels made a rude gesture to him.

"We are here also," the Space Wolf replied. "Come with me to the command bunker. We must talk."

"The Emperor's light brought us to this place. We hunt for traitors!" one young Dark Angel interrupted. "Ours is a mission of all urgency…" Usoran glared at the man, silencing him. The faceless, skeletal gaze of a space marine's helmet was worse to be held beneath than the angriest iron-eyed glare from a naked face.

"Forgive my brother's manners, but he is right," Usoran said to the Space Wolf. "We have little time to waste."

"It just so happens that we have no time to waste either, Dark Angel," the Space Wolf replied. "Russ has visited the dreams of our rune priests once more. The Great Wolfing is upon us. Ragnarok. We are gathering all of the chapters together. They must know."

All of the space marine chapters were getting together? Usoran knew this could perhaps be more pressing than even the Fallen. He considered his options while the colours and names of the last fifteen Astartes chapters drifted through his mind.

The nine first-founding chapters had survived. Alongside them, were six others. Their holy names were the Invaders, the Storm Lords, the Soul Drinkers, the Doom Eagles, the Lamenters, and the Black Templars. Usoran had cried once since becoming a Dark Angel: only once.

It had been on the day, ten years ago, when the last Crimson Fist died on Cadia, reducing the number of Chapters from 16 to 15. They'd not only lost a chapter that day, they'd also lost the Cadian Gate. They'd lost it to the Alpha Legion. A single mass-bombing, carried out from secret that threw the defenses into disarray. Thus did Abadon take the Cadian Gate in a single day of subterfuge, where 13 000 years of Black Crusades had failed. And the Crimson Fists were known for their legendary recovery from an ork invasion.

"Alright, as long as it does not take time away from the hunt," Usoran said. The Space Wolf shook his head.

"You may find that is as much your problem as ours," he touched his earpiece. "This is Odeen, bring me back." And he was gone.

'Perhaps this was why we were led to Necromunda in the first place,' Usoran thought.

…

The hum of the generator that kept the lone light bulb that lit the room as bright as a distant star hummed loudly, piercing even Usoran's skull-helmet and roughing his ears. Behind him were ten of his most trusted brethren. Although all Dark Angels deserved to behold this most urgent of meetings, to discuss matters they were all a part of, the command bunker was not large enough to contain the mighty host held within its stone belly. In the rounded chamber stood a great legion, mighty not in the sheer volume of men, but in who was present. Such heroics had not been contained within a single chamber for generations.

The center of the room was dominated by the glowing star-map of the surrounding area, with red dots to designate intense warzones. As it was, the whole map had an inflamed pox. Standing in the middle of the room were three Space Wolves: the great pack leader Odeen, Runepriest Jarl and the Great Wolf himself: Logan Grimnar, straight from the murals, carvings, statues and paintings and into flesh and metal. Around him were one hundred Astartes from most of the other surviving chapters, including the Dark Angels and the Imperial Fists. The Space Wolves had obviously done well in calling the other chapters together. Some of the Dark Angels muttered annoyed complaints that these hairy Astartes should have the floor. Usoran silenced them. He hated the feud between the Dark Angels and the Space Wolves. In him was a solemn discipline, untwisted by emotion. Some said his passion for logic made him more of an Iron Hand than a true Dark Angel. Usoran let such accusations go, let men say what they thought.

Amongst the crowd, Usoran could see Chapter Master Spectros of the Lamenters: bald, frail and scarred in his yellow armor, adorned with Medal of Tears. Beside him, as though transplanted from another legend, was Gawain, one of the Marshals of the Black Templars. Name after name, legend after legend, Usoran could not believe so many had come. Yet even they were not what had stopped his hearts.

Standing on raised platforms in the rear of the crowd of giants, titans over all of them, were the two most fabled dreadnoughts in the Imperium. The first was Bjorn the Fell-Handed himself, the Space Wolf who had known Leman Russ. The other was the Black Tomb, painted to respect its name, and as much a walking tragedy as a hero entombed. Usoran tried not to think about the story to it. Too painful, even for a Dark Angel.

"Welcome all of you, warriors from other packs. Wolves with wings and not fangs, wolves with manes and lion's teeth…" Logan gestured to Usoran and his ilk upon saying this. Was he trying to provoke them? "I have gathered the packs here without notice. Battle beckons us all and enemy blood needs to be spilled…" he sounded extremely angry as he spoke that. "But there is a great concern which has arisen. Leman Russ has once more hunted through our dreams. He bears the darkest news: Ragnarok is upon us at last." Ragnarok: the end of the world. Either Logan was lying to all of them, which was unthinkable, or the end times really had come. Or…

"Do not trust the dreams of the mind, brother," Spectros warned in his raspy voice. The Lamenters alongside him, all twenty-one of them, nodded. "Chaos deceives. It nips and it ravages the mind. Trust not the vison."

"I will trust my primarch!" Logan barked wolfishly at the solemn Lamenter. "Chaos cannot look like the greatest wolf, not by the Emperor, and not by Russ!" He calmed down. "If Chaos is at work then it awoke Bjorn. He was visited by a vision of Russ, who told him Ragnarok had descended on man. Our iron priests cannot explain it, but he awoke and cannot slumber again. Russ does not let him."

"I am honoured to fight with my brothers," Bjorn's thunder-deep voice echoed from the rear of the bunker. "For one day or one thousand, it is an honor to fight for Russ."

"I still will not believe it," Spectros muttered.

"We have more than assurances from him," Jarl added, his rune-encrusted terminator armor gleaming. "I beheld the wolf in my dreams and he called me to action as he has done with my forebears. However, he showed me a great plot that the archheretic Abaddon now works at. Chaos would not tell me what the wolf of my dreams did." He looked around the chamber, as if to ask forgiveness for speaking the name. "A raid on Holy Terra itself. He will gather all the fallen primarchs together and turn the Emperor's own world into a blazing hellscape. The Emperor himself, they will taint with raw chaos and make him their own…" One hundred voices rose against him in defiance, each stammering their own reason as to how this was impossible.

"You beer-sucking dog! How dare you say such things!" screamed Brother Abdis. Usoran said nothing and waited for the storm to settle. The storm of voices were silenced by a thunderclap: Logan pulled his axe out of the floor, leaving a crevice that could swallow a small child.

"If you faith-blinded idiots would listen to what we had to say, then the Emperor will stay truly safe!" Logan snapped.

"Heretic!" Abdis shouted. Logan raised his storm bolter and searched the crowd.

"I challenge the brother who dared say that!" Logan roared. "When we are done here, I will take him outside and crack his helmet with my teeth!" When none spoke, Logan snorted and lowered his weapon before nodding to Jarl.

"The Emperor's will is not enough to protect him," Jarl continued, "what is going to happen is Abaddon will try to conquer Terra. If he does, then the light of the Emperor will be turned to chaos. It will ensnare the souls of man across the galaxy and bind them to the warp. It will be with His will that the chaos gods will steal from the material galaxy trillions of souls. They will bind them to the warp, making them immortal, but helpless. There the poor souls will be tortured for all eternity, their anguish feeding the daemons. And the universe? Overrun by the warp, lost forever. This will be so, if Abaddon takes Terra." Jarl cleared his throat. "Brothers, the Emperor's might cannot stop Chaos. But honest courage and muscle will. When the despoiler and the heretic legions come, we will kill them."

"But the Imperium of man will die even if we do win." Spectros stepped up to the front, almost bumping into Logan. "The mutant is like a human. But the deeper he falls into mutation the less human he is. After enough generations he loses the last of his humanity and becomes a thing." He looked at the circle. "A sterile thing. Humankind is being overwhelmed by mutation. He goes sterile. Soon there will be no true humans left, but sterile things." Usoran remembered a statistic he'd read from the Administratum fifty years ago. Low birth rates and colossal wars had reduced the Imperial population by one third. "We cannot win," Spectros concluded, "we can only stop them from winning." Logan stared sadly at him.

"That is why it is Ragnarok," he whispered almost in fear. Logan frightened was a paradox, but Usoran knew what he thought he saw. Only then did he realize the weight of the situation.

"I go straight to the front lines from here," Logan said, "to Armageddon. To where Angron once tread. That is where Leman Russ sent me. Great Russ says I will find my enemy there." No one lifted a word of contradiction against him, no one told him he was a fool. Everyone now realized that the Space Wolves were not tricked. The rumor that the Imperium was finished was nothing new, but not until Logan had said what he did to Spectros had anyone so high up affirmed the rumor.

"Take your positions around Holy Terra and be vigilant," Jarl added. "The Inquisition is working day and night to determine the plans of Chaos. But we must be ready for them when they come." The meeting drove into long hours as strategic points were devised. Every chapter took the floor at least once. Even Usoran was brought up to explain the state of his chapter and the forces they could possibly contribute. One by one, their positions were assigned. The Space Wolves went to Armagaddeon and the Imperial Fists would remain on Necromunda.

"The Iron Hands go to the Forge World Hephaestus V," half said, half blared Nachins, an Iron Hands captain.

"The Raven Guard go to Daccussellia," said the black armored captain of the Raven Guard said.

"The Doom Eagles to Catachan."

"The Invaders to Chazz."

"The Lamenters to Holy Terra." Usoran cleared his throat.

"The Dark Angels to Holy Terra," his intuition warned him that it would be there where he would find the Cypher. The men from the Black Templars said nothing as they would simply continue their ancient crusade with an eye out for Abaddon's scheme. All the eyes turned to the Black Tomb: the solitary representative of his chapter. The Black Tomb held no status, having relinquished it. For once during the meeting, the chamber knew lasting freedom from Astartes voices.

"I shall speak of this to my chapter master," the Black Tomb thundered. "The Emperor will guide us through him." He had not yet spoken during the whole of the meeting. Usoran knew the Black Tomb almost never spoke. Through the shadows, he could see the mighty dreadnought, its huge cannons and power-charged fist practically shouting the machine's power. Conversely, the front of the sarcophagus bore a carving of a man, wreathed in light and powerful but weakened as he was shrieking with unimaginable grief and sobbing like a newborn while grabbing at his hair in mad despair: the occupant of the dreadnought. Again, Usoran diverted his mind from ancient but no less painful history.

To Terra then. The Emperor willing, he would find the Fallen there. The Space Wolves had explained everything. The Cypher had gone a long distance because he too sensed the end was near.

"Emperor, I swear it," Usoran said as he felt shame boil in his soul. "No more brothers of my gene seed will lurk in shadow. We will all serve you. I will make it happen with death if I must. In my lifetime. I swear it."

…

At the same moment, thousands of light years away, Inquisitor Rarend of the Ordo Xenos was taking his first step onto an eldar crone world.


	7. Fate of the Grey Knights

The world was not as Rarend had expected. Actually, Rarend had not known what to expect when he was deposited by the mist upon the naked surface of the crone world. He went straight from the eldar ship to the planet: he teleported, not recalling leaving the ship. The mist simply cleared and he was in the depths of the warp itself, upon the skin of an alien planet of ancient histories and dark secrets.

Rarend beheld a scenery of unimaginable beauty. He stood upon a spiraling pathway of smooth stone carved into the structure of a tall, lithe tower. Its spire stabbed gently at the sky, so thin that a strong breeze could conceivably knock it down. It lay beneath a perfect azure sky, festooned with cotton clouds of pearl and a single golden-rayed summer sun that warmed Rarend's face. Looking down to the scenery below, he estimated he was a half-kilometer up. The nature he beheld on the ground could not have been natural: nature's uncareful hand was not so imaginative to sculpt such perfect groves, rainbow gardens, and sapphire pools. Rarend saw a perfect landscape that combined the most unique features of every type of forest he'd ever heard and perfected it. Stabbing up from the woods in many places were other towers, looking like bones of silver. The slow, drifting shapes of eldar craft floated across the sky, their happily singing engines giving off no emissions into the pure air,

'Is this the right place?' Rarend wondered, fearing that some part of his teleportation had occurred improperly and hurled him to the capital of an eldar exodite world, wherever it may be. Rarend had been taught that the last eldar exodites had died out centuries ago, but there could very well still be some out there. But in these times, there was increasingly less space in the galaxy for a world this perfect. It was perfect! Rarend was a hardened inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos, but even he had fallen in love with this alien planet. How he would love to stroll in those perfect gardens and just look at a type of beauty he had never seen in person. Now that he thought of it, it had been nine decades since he had seen a garden. War left no room for them.

'This must be illusion,' Rarend thought, 'it is too perfect.' He looked to the sky and steeled himself. 'The whisperer of lies is fibbing to me, or the prince of pleasure tempts by very soul.' The sound of approaching feet caught his attention. He turned his head to behold a young eldar, a young man, in a black robe and wearing a diadem of pearls, running towards him in a terrible hurry. Rarend prepared to confront the alien but the eldar did not notice him. Indeed, he moved through Rarend like a ghost, and ran up the whirling path. Suddenly he understood. He looked out across the landscape, honour and sickness leaking into his soul.

'The ancient Eldar Empire!' he realized, 'this is a vision of the past.' The fate of this civilization had been obliteration as the depravity of its people have birth to Slaanesh. 'A vile parody of the Imperium of Man! Their obliteration was eared,' he thought. Despite this thought, he wished the destruction had merely slain the eldar, and spared this fertile paradise. Curious, he ran after the eldar.

He soon found himself led to a platform, like a plate for food, but carved with intricate patterns like lacework, that shone with an electrical light. There were five pods, held upon black boxes of stone, and rounded. They looked like beans made of glass, arranged in a ring around the plate. Lying within each was an eldar, sleeping on a bed of soft material, a mask over their faces. The eldar who had passed Rarend was perched over one of the pods, poking it.

The top of the pod swung open like a door and the eldar within it awoke and sat forth. It was an old eldar, but not human-old. He carried no wrinkles on his face and his hair was colourful. Only the vast experience in his eyes and his withered body made Rarend realize his tremendous age.

"Why have you awoken me? Can I get no peace?" demanded the old eldar to the youth in the ancient eldar tongue.

"Forgive me," the younger one said submissively, "but…sir our craftworld has sighted more mon-keigh." Rarend recognized the eldar term for their enemies. "These ones…I have my fears." As he spoke, his eyes crackled with warp-light. No doubt the eldar boy was a powerful psyker.

"Send an extermination fleet as we always do," the old eldar huffed as he lay down. "I'm tired."

"The call is yours, my general," the youth warned. General? Rarend looked around at the other sleeping eldar. Here was a general of the Eldar Empire? Such sloth would be ended quickly in even the most informal of Imperial worlds.

"Raise the Iron Knights," the general said. "Activate the auto-war mainframe. Point the knights, push a few buttons, they pay it out." The general leaned in to the youth, "as always." The youth nodded to the box.

"The activation of the Iron Knights does not work without your signature," the youth reminded him. The general moved, as if to stand up, but decided against it as it would take him from his pod. He snapped his fingers and a tiny winged figure emerged from the stone of the wall. Built of some form of melted metal the figure, shaped like a child's fairy, began to touch random parts of the box the general's pod sat upon, activating something.

"These mon-keigh, my general, the farseers say that they are…special," the youth continued, "I've seen one. They look like us but with more hair and…"

"Less assets?" asked the old general as he put his mask back on. He squealed in pleasure from something the mask did to his mind. "Come, what could they do to us? Have your farseer friends seen anything else with their mind-tricks that would make us worry?"

"The farseers can see the future, sir," the youth stammered in some anger, "it is incredible to someone like you, but it is well known that the best of them can look into the far future and…seen terrifying things," the youth trailed off as the metal figure opened a hidden door on the stone. It took a crystal from the space and brought it up to the general, who nipped himself in the finger and let some crimson blood onto the gem.

"The Iron Knights have their orders," the general said, "now go away." The figure returned the crystal to its place and returned to the tower's wall, melting into the stone like water into a sponge. The general lay down and pulled the lid onto himself.

"These mon-keigh," the youth continued as the general closed his pod, "one farseer I spoke to said they will one day control the much of the galaxy in our place. He said that we will be all but extinct soon. I was warned of a time in the far future when…" he shrugged, perhaps already aware the general was not listening. But still he talked in desperation. "He said that," he sighed, "in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war."

The general did not answer. The young eldar shook his head in disappointment as he looked out across the forest. Already, glowing humanoid figures of eldar warrior automata were taking to the air on silent engines. Rising from the forest, in multiple fingers of silver that filled the sky like rain, they flew into the sky.

Then, Rarend saw the youth turn his head as though startled to look at him. He squinted curiously, his mouth opened to speak but he said nothing. Rarend saw him extend a slender hand to touch him. The youth walked towards him, then, looking into Rarend's face, gave a startled cry.

This made no sense, Rarned was just an observer. Could this reflection from the long-lost past see him?

Was this more than illusion?

…

Rarend opened his eyes and sat up. He had been lying down and awoke now as if from a dream. He would have thought it had been a dream except that he now lay in the middle of the plate where he had been before. The pods were still there, their captives still inside. However, three modern eldar warriors stood over them, caressing the pods sadly. Standing with them was the farseer who had captured Rarend as well as the armored leader who had interrogated him. Rarend rose up and looked around.

The landscape was a steppe of black ash in all directions. The withered remains of the towers, brown and shriveled like an uprooted rose left in the sun, stood around them. They writhed out of the dirt, rather than stand proudly above it as they had once done. The sky was a mess of changing colours. Rarend didn't look at it too long, lest he grow dizzy. But that was the least of his worries. To look into the warp would bring more than sore eyes.

"What was that?" Rarend demanded hotly.

"We traveled through time," replied the farseer from beneath her helmet. "It is how we trick the gods. We go as ghosts into the past, arrive where we want, then return to now. It is a simple explanation, like saying that a flower is a pile of cells, but it shall suffice for you. But how is unimportant. We now stand on the surface of our ancestor's soil. And you are here to see it."

"You have other purposes here, but it is vital that at least one human beholds the end of all things," the helmeted leader added, stepping to Rarend's side. Before Rarend could ask him what they were going to do now, he gestured out to the chaos-ravaged world. "The cataclysm that destroyed us, it is happening again."

"The new warp rift," Rarend muttered, "the one from which Chaos will come to Terra."

"Exactly. Rana Dhandra is upon us. And you have a part to play, as do we all." The leader looked around, expectantly. "Ah, the others come, just as I had hoped they would." Five clouds of tight mist appeared around the plate, one for each pod.

"What others?" Rarend asked. From each of the clouds stepped a tall eldar warrior. One was dressed as a skeleton and carried a scythe, one wore wings, one wore a banshee mask, one wore a proud crest and one wore a helmet shaped like a scorpion. Rarend was a learned man, but not so learned that he recognized the Phoenix Lords.

The eldar were ready to die.

…

The eldar general looked as he had in the past. He was, however, wide awake and seemed to be babbling to himself. Whatever mad ranting escaped his lips was a mystery to Rarend and perhaps it was best so. After 13000 years of rambling, what could Rarend recieve except an ear full of pollution from the ranting madman. He therefore stayed as far away from the pod as he could, instead choosing to stand between pods. He did not dare set foot upon the ash of the world. To leave the plate might bring him torment untold at the hands of whatever cruel daemon masters sat lorded over this tortured realm.

"So they are called the Phoenix Lords?" Rarend asked to the farseer beside him. He watched the circle of tall eldar warriors as they stood in silence, their minds touching invisibly. In each he beheld not the fickle arrogance of most of the eldar, who sat in the shadows like cowards, striking from there and fleeing when chased, but a noble strength that would rival the mightiest Astartes lords. The scythe-carrier intrigued him the most. Its skull-like helm was a in many ways alike to the helmets worn by the Emperor's finest. The heavy chainsword the scoripion-headed one carried reminded him of Usoran's chainsword.

"We are a witness to history's end. Fuegan has called the Pheonix Lords together for the final battle against Chaos," the farseer explained. "Even now, the masters of the shrines plot and weave their plans for the upcoming strife. The stars will be awash with blood and ringing with the screams of death. Soon we will be no more." Rarend looked at the farseer sideways. Her musical voice spoke very highly of her people's extinction.

'Truly I am grateful to be a human if this is how the alien mind thinks,' he thought. "What does destiny dictate for your people?" He knew the farseer would have an answer. If she did not, then the teachings of the best minds of the Inquisition had failed him.

"There is a prophecy that foretold this day and this meeting and thus far every letter of it has been faithful," the farseer explained from behind her masked face. "The Phoenix Lord will soon split apart and lead our people to their fate. It is said that each of those six will die, with the last one to go being Fuegan." She indicated the warrior who Rarend had first met.

"Fuegan," Rarend rolled the word through his mouth. "Does the prophecy at least tell you of how events will unfold? If my death was as ordained as theirs, I would work every moment of my day to stave death off." He understood that he was seeking to learn from a xenos, which teetered upon heresy. To him however, this was priceless study and could be forgiven in the infinite light of the Emperor's throne, providing of course that he escaped this wretched captivity.

"I do not know the exact wording," the farseer replied, "but the prophecy foretells…" she cleared her throat. "The Harvester of Souls, Maugan Ra, shall be hewn by the Harvester of Souls.' She indicated the scythe-carrier. She turned her finger to the banshee-masked one. "The Storm of Silence, Jain Zar, struck down by the Storm of Silence. The Cry of the Wind, Barahrroth, swept away by The Cry of the Wind," she indicated the winged one. "The Hunter of Shadows, Karandras, caught by the Hunter of Shadows," she pointed to the scorpion-headed one. "The Hand of Asur, Asurmen, crushed by the Hand of Asur," she pointed to the frilled one. "And Fuegan, the Burning Lance, shall be the last to fall: Obliterated by the Burning Lance."

As she spoke, Maugan Ra stepped over to them, abandoning the silent meeting. The farseer groveled before the titan of bone, but Rarend would as soon bow to a tyrant.

"You are the human?" asked Maugan Ra, his voice deeper than any eldar voice that Rarend had ever heard. It was a mellow voice, but powerful, like a note from a tuba. It differed in that it was not as beautiful. "Come." With those words and a simple gesture, Maugan Ra stepped towards a glowing nimbus of warp-energy that appeared near the edge of the circle. When Rarend did not follow, the farseer urged him.

"To disobey the Harvester of Souls is to disobey death," warned the farseer.

"I obey one will and one will only: the divine will of the immortal god Emperor of man," Rarend stated. As he did, Karandras and Jain Zar departed the circle, disappearing into their own nimbus, off to their own fraction of the final battle of the eldar.

"Come human," the Phoenix Lord repeated without patience as he moved towards Rarend. When Rarend did not move, Maugan Ra hooked him in with his scythe, dragging him to the nimbus. Rarend felt his wrist grabbed by Maugan Ra's bony fist. Just as he entered the nimbus, he heard the eldar lord's voice in his ear. "Death is inevitable, human. Do not disobey it when it calls to you." Was the Phoenix Lord proud enough to name himself death? An eldar could be so arrogant. Or perhaps Rarend was being called to his death? Rarend's mind debated over which one was intended as they were hurled through the warp and out of time.

…

It was rumored that Skoll was descended from the great Warboss Ghazghkull Thrakka himself. Skoll made sure that every single one of his nobz thumped into the thick skulls of his boyz that Skoll was as good as the direct son of the legendary ork: he who began the great Armageddon Scrap, which was well into its 30th century. Over three thousand years that distant word had writhed under the hammerblows of an endless ork Waaaagh! If only Skoll were there.

'I's not at the big one, but me better than Thrakka. Me brutes are bigger than his boyz," Skoll blathered to himself as he looked down at the battle. "Put me against Ghazghkull and I could pound him flat." Of course, most warbosses could pound Thrakka's mob flat with their own warbands if Ghazghkull and the original Armageddon Waaagh! still lived. The truth was, orks were bigger now than ever. What once passed for a nob in the runtier ages of the 41st Millennium was now a small boy. The nobz of today stood many, many meters tall. Skoll was slightly taller than that and could throw a small car. Stories abounded of the biggest warbosses being able to throw tanks high into the air.

'All exaggerate," Skoll thought proudly, "I's the biggest boss around.' He looked across at the gargant of warboss Balorguts: a roughly ork-shaped mountain of a silhouette on in the distance. 'I's bigger than that one.' Though killing Balorguts would leave Skolll the biggest, Skoll would never in his life think of raising a finger against a fellow ork as did all the biggest warbosses. There'd be fewer Waaaaghs! If that was not so.

Below him, from his perch atop his gargant, millions of colossal orks washed across the sands of the planet towards the tau city. Roaring buggies, tanks built to look like beasts, smoking bikes, and all variations of rag-tag attack truck and warbike raced through the legions, guns blazing. The pinpricks of red that were their orkish eyes lit up the ground like red stars in a green nighttime sky. Today was a good day to be an ork!

As the first thousands came into range of the tau city, that gleaming oasis of pearly buildings, blue plasma fire slashed into the hordes. Hundreds of orks died every second, but stopping them was like stopping a tidal wave with stones. The momentum was overwhelming and soon blossoming explosions erupted from within the city as ork cannons hit their mark. Gleaming tau bunkers blew apart, buildings began to bleed powdery smoke. Yet still the tau guns flashed from the city and still more orks fell.

"Boss! The sky! Der's some weird fings up there," crackled the ear-voice-thing in Skoll's ear. The warboss craned his head to the sky to see a flight of dozens of tau attack ships sailing down. Through his one bionic eye, Skoll could see the skiffs were painted black and festooned with spikes and chains with morbid symbols of death written across their customized hulls. No two ships were alike: shaped by the preferences of their crew. Some sported cannons by the dozen while others were armored transports, built to ram larger ships

Now here were real tau! Not like the cowards and water-boweled gits who lived in the cities and followed ancient customs. These were the tau warriors that Skoll had come to fight.

Blue-tailed rockets spilled down from these newcomers, blossoming into white explosions of plasma amidst the orks, killing countless hundreds. Tanks flew through the air while whole mobs of both Balorgut's and Skoll's orks were burned to a crisp in a heartbeat. The cannon on the attack ships roared, splitting the head clean from Balorgut's gargant. It fell to the ground in an avalanche of debris, crushing more ork forces beneath it.

"Fly boyz! Make them into scrap!" roared Skoll as he pointed his chainaxe at the sky. His message was broadcast to the fighta skwadrins, that soared into the midst of the attack ships, appearing first on the horizon, but soon dogfighting furiously with the sleek tau ships.

The attack craft lightened their load, dropping plasma bombs and about one hundred larger, slow-falling pods onto the orks. The bombs inflicted more horrendous losses to the ork mob. Heartened by the appearance of allies, the city-tau fought harder and more boyz died. Though ten thousand orks now lay dead, it was only a scratch to the integrity of the mob. They still stretched to the far horizon, with more on the way. Skoll laughed, knowing the tau would thin out the weak and leave the strong.

As he watched, the slower pods landed. They burst asunder and revealed tau warriors, in powered armor, ready to kill. With their brutal close-range burst weaponry, these suits battled. Their bodies were made to look like towering beasts and electrified blades of all types hung from their limbs. These tau fought brutally, slashing and hacking with their blades, crushing and hewing yet more orks apart. But the mob had them surrounded. They would not escape so long as they didn't fly away like weedy little gits.

A crash caught Skoll's attention. Looking from his perch on his personal gargant's shoulder, he saw a tau suit had dropped onto the other shoulder. It was painted blood red, with spiky shoulders and wrist-mounted cannons. In one hand, Skoll saw a heavy chainsword and in the other was a bladed whip that sung with electrical energy. The suit wore a necklace of shrunken heads, mostly human but some ork. From its back sprouted mechanical wings, like those of a bird. Its face was forged to look like an eagles.

"Die ya fish git!" Skoll bellowed as his titanic form rushed the suit, which stood at one half his own size. As his huge axe came down on the suit, the tau inside lifted off and circled behind Skoll, jumping over his head, his chainsword marring the ork's armor plates. Skoll wheeled around and slashed, but the tau deflected with his chainsword. The two began to furiously duel atop the gargant. Skoll's blows were strong, but the tau knew how to angle his own sword so to use the ork's weighty blows against him. Rents appeared all over Skoll's armor as the tau struck him again and again.

"Die!" Skoll roared, his glowing red eyes flaring. He swung his axe, but saw the tau whip his whip about it. With a snap, the axe came loose. The tau let the axe fall and cracked Skoll in the face with it. Skoll's cybernetik eye went all fuzzy for a moment. Things were looking bad, Skoll only had his klaw, which the tau could dodge easily.

Taking a grab at the tau, Skoll found the tau to again be too fast. He jumped over him again, wrist-blasters gauging the top of his body. A tau would be felled by such hits, but Skoll's ork body could handle it.

"Die!" Skoll roared as he turned clumsily around only to find the tau had jumped over him and was now on the opposite side. He felt the tau's chainsword cut deep into his back. Rage overcame Skoll and he turned around again to face his foe. He moved faster this time, and faced the suit.

"DIEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!" Skoll roared as his eyes burned with energy and the air around him crackled with red electrik stuff. The ork lunged for the tau. Before he could hit though, the elekrik stuff surrounded the suit. The warrior convulsed as glowing hot rents appeared in his exoskeleton. The suit suddenly exploded into atoms in a flash of hate-filled red energy. Where once stood a proud tau warrior there was only a black burn.

"Dat's better," Skoll huffed as he checked his head for blood. "I luv it when dat happens."

He looked approvingly down at the fighting. The orks had climbed over the bodies of their dead and were now rampaging through the outskirts of the city.

"Are you sure this is the world? Our scanners find no sign of the Talisman of Vaul," the autarch asked Maugan Ra as they surveyed the planet from space, upon the bridge of their craftworld.

"Yes it is. Our human guest, whose name is Rarend, knows this world well. His mind led us to it as surely as the webway guides," Maugan Ra said.

"But it is occupied by tau and sieged by billions of greenskins," complained the autarch.

"Death is inevitable," Maugan Ra said. "Do not disobey it when it calls to you."

…

Maugan Ra wasn't alone.

"My lord, we are over the planet that the eldar craftworld has led us to," beeped the servitor to its master, Skander Moorus, one of the Brother-Captains of the Grey Knights.

From his battle barge, which was cloaked from the eldar sensors, Skander Moorus and the assembled Grey Knights could see the shape of the titanic xenos craftworld. They had found it at long last: the ultimate weapon, which could aid them in their duty. If their psychic investigations had been right, the desert world below them carried a Blackstone Fortress, one of the most powerful weapons ever built. This one was rumored to be particularly powerful. Perfect.

"Brothers! Grey Knights!" Skander Moorus roared to his assembled warriors behind him as he raised his force sword, "today, my holy brothers, we war with the alien! We will purge this planet!" A cheer from the assembled Grey Knights followed as they bashed the butts of their halberds on the deck of the battle-barge.

"Kill! Purge!" they chanted over and over again. The ship's servitors began to hurry about in preparation for the drop. Skander Moorus turned away from his battle brothers and to the window. He took his helmet from the servitor.

"For the glory of Chaos," Skander Moorus whispered as he clapped his helmet on. "Death to the false Emperor!"


	8. The Origin of the Tyranids

Rarend looked down on the world from his apartment in the eldar craftworld. He did not know which one this was, only that he was here when the mist Maugan Ra took him into had cleared. He did not look around his room. He knew only that it was there, holding him in its alien-sculpted bowel. He sat upon a mushroom-shaped chair and looked at the desert world below. He knew the world, he had led the eldar here. His mind had been violated by their psykers and its location discerned. This was Verrelinor, the very heart of the surviving tau worlds. Here was based the largest stationary population of tau in the known universe. The Imperium would earn access here only after a decade of war with tau vanguards and their pirate outposts. Yet here they were.

As he looked down, he realized he could see the tiny darting shape of a ship heading down towards the planet. At this distance, it was just a black speck. The eldar strikeforce had departed already, thus it could not have been they. What did it matter?

"Rarend," said the simply dressed eldar whom Rarend fancied as his keeper, several minutes after the sighting. "You are needed."

"I do not answer to your call, xenos," Rarend replied.

"The chaos space marines whom you call the Grey Knights have been sighted by our scanners." Rarend's eyes widened.

"No, Emperor forbid it, not them," he rasped in horror.

Two hundred years before his birth, the Grey Knights had been loyal to the Emperor. They were indeed the purest Astartes there were, whose job was to destroy daemons for the Ordo Malleus They were the 666th chapter of the Empeor's service. Yet, as the Imperium was ravaged by orks and uprisings, the Grey Knights were forced to lower their standards for new recruits, but that was merely one problem of many. Though they were god-like in the eyes of mortal men, they were simply Astartes with a geneseed too, just like all space marines, and as with most other Astartes, their geneseed also began to fail them. It was said that they got too close to one daemonic power while destroying it, and were thus their softened marines were weakly corrupted. The subtle whisperings of chaos made them see daemons were there were none and they began to pressure the Ordo Malleus into sanctioning Exterminatus upon worlds were no daemon had yet set foot. The overworked and understaffed Ordo Malleus were quick to comply. Untold billions died by their mad hand as loyal Imperial worlds were savaged. When this was realized, the Grey Knights were called to Terra itself, some said to the Golden Throne, to repent before the Emperor. To the Grey Knights, they were being punished for honest duty. Feeling betrayed, the Grey Knights fled justice. From there, with nothing to do and no one to work for but themselves, they stagnated, turning selfish. The whispers of daemons easily turned them to Chaos, which they saw as a source of power to survive with in a hostile galaxy. Now they brought death unheard of before to Imperial worlds, to the citizenry of an Emperor they said had turned on them. Their weapon of choice: virus bombs.

"Our army has not encountered them. The autarch needs information on them, and as an inquisitor, you should know something about them."

"I am of the Ordo Xenos, the Grey Knights were of the Ordo Malleus," Rarend replied. "Still, their story is told as a cautionary tale. I know how they are armed."

…

"Faster!" barked Gassar to the members of the so-called earth caste of the city-tau. "If you want your families to live you will do as I say!" Gassar prodded a passing city-tau with his chainsword. To think these unarmed, industrious, and unadventurous tau were even the same race as he made Gassar wretch. His ruthless life as a pirate lord amongst the stars made him sure that every tau was born a killer with a knife in their hands. Yet these conservative wretches preserved the ancient tau way of life. Rubbish.

Waves of these "Earth caste" tau retreated into the tunnels of the bunker, fleeing the orks. Gassar leaned on his chainsword and oversaw the flow of refugees. Their exhausted, starved faces were like ghosts in the dim light of the photon bulbs that lit these dark tunnels. They were more like walking maggots than true, blooded tau.

"Gassar?" asked one of the earth caste members. "Gassar of the blade caste?" Blade caste: city-tau slang for Gassar's people. The speaker was one of the aun'o of the city: an ethereal of the highest post. Seeing as how the world was almost totally lost, he might be the last aun'o on this planet. Perhaps the last in the galaxy. Gassar knew the thought too good to be true. Or was it?

"Gassar, are you truly sure this bunker is safe?" asked the aun'o, pulling his dirty roves in around him.

"It is the deepest place there is. It is either here or try running the blockade of ork warriors that choke this city. My men have their ships, but there's not enough of them for all of you slobs," Gassar spat. "Good job at holding your city, by the way." In his mind, he envisioned the empty city now being plundered by his crew as was the plan.

"Now is not the time for jokes, blade caste," the aun'o replied.

Just then, the river of refugees turned around. Suddenly, there were screaming tau pushing their way back out of the bunker, fleeing in terror. They yelled warnings to those who were trying to push their way in. Gassar was confused until he heard gunfire come from inside the bunker. Though the plan was to force the city-tau down here and rob their dwellings, he truly had thought these deep bunkers to be safe. They were built from an abandoned mine shaft that had been abandoned for unknown reasons.

"You said it was safe," hollered the aun'o without shouting. His damnable discipline, not a true warrior's quality. The aun'o began to oversee his people. "People: do not stampede, listen to…." Gassar shot the aun'o through the skull with his autopistol. He would only complicate things.

"Clear aside!" Gassar yelled as he pushed through the crowd, brutally gunning down anyone who stayed in his way. His chainsword howled, scaring dozens aside. He had to get out of here. These city-tau could die, and Gassar would let them all die if it meant he could live. "Move!"

Just then, a red explosion of energy ripped through the tunnel ahead of him. When the energy dissipated, Gassar stopped and saw that, standing in the wake of the explosion, over a patch of clear ground that was carpeted in blackened tau bodies, was a hulk of an armored man in a grey suit of human armor. On his chest he wore a shield that was painted with the star of chaos. His eyes glowed red, his body was draped with banners depicting evil runes. In one hand was a sword with a blade built from oily black smoke made solid. On his other glove was mounted a machine gun whose barrel was built to imitate a roaring monster. His helmet was decorated his ivory horns.

Gassar didn't even get to raise his autopistol before the hulk blasted him nearly in two.

…

Maugan Ra and his small entourage of eldar warriors stopped in the middle of the street as the warlock they were with held up his gloved hand. They were alone, but the sound of distant fighting made his words hard to hear.

"The Grey Knights are in the mine. They will reach the Talisman before we do," the warlock warned. Maugan Ra nodded.

"We must therefore be swift," the autarch said. "To the city center." All knew that if the Talisman of Vaul were to lift off, then it would explode out from the city's center.

"What if we should fail?" asked Issendre to Maugan Ra, scanning the buildings before the party broke into a run.

"Then we would follow the humans to wherever they take the talisman," Maugan Ra replied. "If they do not sufficiently provoke the C'tan, the necrons will not awaken in time." The thought was dreadful.

Then the city shook. It was as if the gods were shaking the world in their hands. Windows shattered. Sure-footed eldar warriors tumbled to the floor. Bombed-out buildings fell in avalanches of smoky ruin. Only Maugan Ra remained on his feet. So this was the course the future would take. It would fall to these humans and not the eldar to anger the C'tan.

…

"We're withdrawing?" asked Rarend to his keeper.

"The Grey Knights have the Blackstone Fortress, so our team claims," the eldar replied as he looked sadly down at the planet. Rarend shuddered.

"They will use it to sew extinction across the stars. The Grey Knights are interested in only one thing: planetary destruction," Rarend shivered. "And the Blackstone Fortress, or the Talisman of Vaul as the eldar seem to call them, can do just that." He thought of the mighty fortress' warp-cannon. "Tell me eldar, why do your people want this weapon?" he hoped the eldar was not vigilant. One glimpse at the xenos plans and all might reveal itself.

"You may know only this, inquisitor," replied the eldar. "If we fail here, the enslavers will destroy your Imperium." Enslavers? That was what Apollyon had said

"Tell me more about the enslavers," Rarend asked.

"You know them better than I," the eldar answered. "They are lurking in the webway, ready to strike at all parts of the Imperium at once."

"As are the tyranids."

"No Rarend, the tyranids are the enslavers." Rarend looked quizzically at the eldar. "Ah, so the Imperum does not know the origin of the creatures whom you call tyranids."

"And you aliens do?"

"Have you ever heard of the enslaver plague? Surely your Imperium has raped the archives of our captured relics enough to hear of it," the eldar muttered venomously.

"When the enslavers washed across the galaxy, driving near everything extinct? It forced the C'tan xenos and their minions into slumber," replied Rarend, dredging up the lessons the Ordo Xenos had taught him.

"Has your Imperum ever asked itself what happened to the trillions of enslavers who became stranded in the galaxy following the plague?" the eldar asked.

"I should think they returned to the warp or died off."

"They didn't die off. They looked for ways to survive in the material universe. They were unhappy with their weak bodies, so they used their controlling powers to take control of what flesh they could to build themselves better bodies. Trillions of minds, melded together to control a relatively small amount of tissue. Thus they could abandon their soft, gentle forms and transfer their minds into new flesh. They left the galaxy, looking for more tissue, more ways to perfect their forms, always eating, always looking for larger, better bodies. Their minds worked together, controlling their whole collection of stolen flesh. Now they return to the galaxy after millions of years, after sweeping across other galaxies, evolved, perfected." The eldar hung his head, perhaps embarrassed that he was telling Rarend all of this. "They are poised to wipe life from this galaxy, just as before." Rarend understood now.

"And you are going to stop them," he muttered. "With the Blackstone Fortress." The eldar said nothing. He seemed afraid.


	9. Death Rises

"When I am summoned by the Inquisition, I am unanimously summoned by an inquisitor, not by his bodyguards," spat Captain Ralphelo of the Ultramarines. Afennor was pleased that he was not so close to the marine as the others were. The blue armored giant looked like he was about to erupt. His red face, offended eyes, and upraised arm intimidated even he, as the teenager crouched behind a door in the corner of the hangar of the ship where he had spent the last months of his life.

The space marine was silhouetted against the open hangar door. The light from outside flooded in: a loud din of light that deafened the eye and not the ear. He couldn't even clearly see the outside of the world of Nubia X, with its sweltering heat, two suns, and shimmering cities. Afennor had heard that a full 100% of the population of Nubia X was mutant, a full mutant world of the Imperium, filled with anti-imperial cults and worshippers of the religion of Kaos, which even Afennor's old commissar had feared. To speak the word was forbidden. Naturally they would find the Adeptus Astartes here, in the rancid belly of heresy, and to battle the religion of Kaos.

"I am sorry," pleaded one of the ten inquisitorial henchmen to the captain, "but we had no other alternative. There are no inquisitorial forces…anywhere. We had to come all the way here…."

"Why?" demanded Ralphelo as the four astartes he'd brought readied their bolters. "What is the meaning of this?"

"Honourable marine, the…the…I mean…our inquisitor was kidnapped by aliens," pleaded a henchman, "we were investigating a wrecked xeno ship when we encountered an alien that looked like an Adeptus Astartes warrior. Our inquisitor slew him, but he came back to life. And then more aliens came. We need…" Ralphelo silenced him with a glare of his naked head, his wrinkled face and grey hair made Affennor think of one of the statues around his barracks. Ralphelo was the first old man Afennor had seen in years.

"What you need is to abandon your hopes of intervention from us. Your inquisitor's soul is with the Emperor. I am sorry that you came here all the way from Pacificus, but your time with me is up." Ralphelo moved to turn around, but stopped. Afennor couldn't see what the man was doing. The chilling skeletal faceplates of his brother marines all turned on the captain expectantly.

"An alien that looks like a battle-brother?" asked Ralphelo.

"He said his name was Apollyon, primarch of the Hornet Legion."

"There were only eighteen primarchs and I know all their names, though I will only speak half of them. None of them are Apollyon," Ralphelo turned to the henchmen as if suddenly changing his mind about not helping them. "As men of the Ordo Xenos, I would expect you to have guarded your mind against the lies of the alien. If you wish to rejoin your comrades, I can have…" he fell quiet and rose his hand to the earpiece he was wearing, while he held up a finger the size of a sausage.

"Ralphelo," Ralphelo said. He paused as the person on the other end of the earpiece told him something. "Right now?" Ralphelo asked, "can he not…I understand. Ralphelo out." The captain lowered his hands. "The Black Tomb is coming here." A shudder ran through the henchmen. To Afennor, the name was as meaningless as the shudder. Should Afennor be afraid of the frightening name?

"In here?" asked a henchman

"Indeed," replied Ralphelo. "perhaps a chance to behold the legendary warrior will make the journey worth it?" Ralphelo gestured to Afennor. "Explain the boy." The henchmen all leaned over to Afennor, who instinctively ducked as he always did when something abruptly turned his way.

"Just a slave we rescued from tau pirates. He labors around the ship. Pay him no mind," assured one of the henchmen.

"He is unworthy of looking upon the Black Tomb. Send him away."

"Yes." Afennor flashed behind the door, sat down and frowned, teenage indignity gripping his heart. He felt like a rat aboard this ship, although he had been just that back at home as he darted from ruin to ruin. When no one came to shoe him into the shadows, Afennor continued to sit and listen.

Soon, there was the sound of the engines of another ship, then an almighty crash, then the vibrating footfalls of a giant.

"Behold the Black Tomb, dreadnought of Ultramar. He might help you with your plight, but I doubt it," Ralphelo announced. Afennor grew excited. Such footfalls could only mean a space marine, perhaps twenty feet tall! He'd heard tales of giants among the Adeptus Astartes. His slender hands shivered in excitement.

"What plight?" asked a voice, like the boom of a drum. The henchmen explained. "The alien is elusive, but not even one thousand inquisitors are as important as what I have to say. Ralphelo, Abaddon the Despoiler is on the move. I must speak with Chapter Master Constantor." There was a pause. "Ralphelo?"

"We will speak at length about this in private. Take your thunderhawk and deploy on the west side of the city. Keep your scouts in your ship. I will attempt to make contact with Constantor," said Ralphelo. "I can make no guarentees, Black Tomb. Constantor is on Sifo II, battling the orks. Very far away from here."

"Yes," the giant's voice sounded depressed. "But I will not fail. The Ultramarines too must defend the Empeor against Kaos. I fear, if we fail, all will be lost." How could such a giant sound so sad? Afennor was entertaining the idea of sticking his head out and looking at the man whose name was Black Tomb, when the whole ship shuddered. They had landed on a platuea, far from the city, so such a shudder could only mean…

"Brothers, the Emperor's enemies are here!" shouted Ralphelo. "Black Tomb: bring your scouts out of the ship. They shall feel the wrath of the Emperor's finest!" Frightened, Afennor dashed into the hangar where he imagined he could be safe. The ship shook again, almost shaking him off his feet. Ralphelo didn't even notice him when he scampered to hide behind him, he was looking around the hangar and sniffing the air while his men awaited his orders. Afennor had positioned himself at the bottom of the landing ramp for an Astartes gunship that had not been there before.

"Boy!" one of the henchmen scolded, running over to him. "You're not supposed…" Whatever he said after that, Afennor did not hear. He was distracted by the…Afennor could only call it a walking tank, that stood alongside him. It regarded him with its front as a man would regard something with his face, then looked away.

"Pitiful," the giant muttered, sounding disappointed. There was a moment of quiet.

"My lord, it's coming in through the walls!" one of the marines cried out. Indeed there was, and it was a sight Afennor refused to acknowledge even as it happened before his eyes.

It was a machine, slender and elongated. It was built of black metal, with a round "head" with three glowing red lights for eyes on the featurless face. Its serpentine body, built in segments, was lined with two rows of flexible limbs. The two foremost carried cannons, whose alien shafts glowed a sickly green. It looked like a centipede, but with longer legs.

Bolters fired, but none hit as the machine leapt around the room, dodging everything thrown at it. Startled by the gunfire, Afennor skittered into the gunship just as the machine fired bolts of green energy into the marines.

…

"Kill me alien," the Black Tomb cursed as he pumped shots at the machine. Its face brought a Necron tombspyder to mind, but it was unlike any Necron machine he had yet seen. "Die, die, die!" he shouted, unable to get a clean shot on the jumping alien warrior. Three of the Ultramarines were killed in as many shots. The two survivors fled for the Black Tomb's thunderhawk. The Black Tomb could have loaded himself into the specialized compartment near the hawk's front, but he did not. He wanted to fight, and perhaps die.

"Withdraw!" Raphelo yelled as he stopped on the ramp up to the thunderhawk. "I order you…!" a shot from the alien hit him, turning his head to a skull and his skull to powder.

"No!" the Black Tomb yelled, "not again!" with renewed fury, the Black Tomb stomped across the hangar to the alien machine, Necron or whatever it was. Green lightning from the enemy's guns caused his armor's carapace to sizzle and bend, but he charged, howling in rage and three thousand years of shame. Closer, the machine had little time to dodge the shots. The Black Tomb's guns blew it in half, and it vanished in sizzling green energy.

"Raphelo!" The Black Tomb wished so badly for another machine to show up so it could destroy him. "Emperor forgive me!"

The thunderhawk flew away from the plateau, the Black Tomb aboard. Above Rarend's ship flew a huge necron monolith, blasting the ship over and over. And from the plateau's sides, tunnels were just beginning to yawn open as sand fell away. As the thunderhawk pierced the clouds, the first Necron warriors marched out and set their sights on the city.

Little did those aboard the thunderhawk know that this was happening everywhere. The seals that contained death were breaking.

[i]And the seven angels which had seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound. The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of the trees were burnt up and all the green grass was burnt up –Revelation 8: 7, 8 [/i]

The Blackstone Fortress looked like a gigantic space station, pure black, with reaching arms extending out from an alien-built pyramid. It, and many like it, had been constructed to war against the C'tan, whose greatest weakness had been the warp. This Blackstone Fortress carried a great warp-cannon, which could bend and break reality. There were few weapons that could boast a more terrible reputation.

And now the Grey Knights had one of the most powerful ever built.

The Nero VI, which was the flagship for the Grey Knight's little fleet, drifted lazily alongside their Blackstone Fortress as its warp-cannon fired at the defenseless word of Trihsder. The glowing lance of energy shot into the world, which began to bubble and boil while reality came apart. Red tears appeared across Trihsder's surface as its inhabitants died. The surface burned with the immaterium's fire. The Blackstone Fortress ended its apocalyptic shot only when the world was a formless rock, lifeless, its cities destroyed, its surface wreacked with warp energy. The Grey Knights fled before the Imperial Navy came.

Little did they know, beneath Trihsder's cities, had laid a spiderwebbing complex of Necron tombs. As the tombs were destroyed an ancient alien, known to some as Death, sensed it. The alien vowed revenge.

…

The chamber was built of stone, but to someone inside they might wonder if the walls were built of protective seals and paper: so densely were they packed. In the center of the room lay a rack with which a sadistic man may torture a victim. Tied to the device was an eldar warrior, pale, dressed in what he had worn under his exarch armor. In front of him was the blue-clad splendor of an ancient Ultramarines librarian, known as Tigurius. His eyes were closed and his cybernetic hand, replacing the one he lost on Macragge, was clasping the eldar's face.

"And what do your people plan?" Tigurius asked the captured exarch. "Why were they upon Sifo II, around that ancient ruin?" The answer came forth, prodded by the Ultramarine's psyker powers.

"The…ruin…carries…a…webway…gate," gasped the exarch, his mouth moving against his will. "We…watch…it…for…the…tyranids."

"The hive fleet does not wait in the webway," Tigurius warned, "do not lie to…" he could instinctively sense truth in the eldar's words. "Why do you watch over our world?"

"In…case…we…failed."

"Failed what, alien?"

"To…awaken…the…necrons." Tigurius was taken aback. Even one such as he was surprised by these words. The eldar were the hidden puppetmasters of the galaxy, but never did they pull strings to raise the necron enemy up. As Tigurius took his hand from the eldar's face and contemplated what he had been told, he sensed the eldar about to speak on his own will.

"You fool!" the exarch spat, "you made me give that up! Now your blind Imperium will be fighting to stop us from what we are doing!" The pond of Tigurius' calm mind did not ripple beneath the stones the eldar cast at it. Even as the eldar yelled, Tigurius was thinking, or the reaching of his mind. Something was indeed about to happen on Sifo II, something worse than the orkish invasion that engulfed it. "If you must know, we awaken the necrons to save your species from the tyranids!" Immediately Tiguirus understood the eldar's intention.

"Because the necrons lie hidden across the galaxy and across Ultima Segmentum, where most of the hive fleet now stirs," Tiguirus dictated. "The necrons will awaken in full force and destroy the tyranids as the spill from the webway. Then, when the tyranids are all but destroyed, you will use a Blackstone Fortress against the C'tan." Tiguirus knew exactly which Blackstone Fortress the eldar intended to use, and he didn't even need his powers. It was the one Skander Moorus was using. "But you have succeeded alien, for an epedemic of necron awakenings has swept the Imperium."

"That is not our doing," the exarch replied, "though, by Isha, it should have been. We intended to use it to destroy the largest tombworlds, which are free of Imperial cities. But Skander Moorus seems to have done our job for us, albeit, at your expense, human." Tigurius left the chamber, shutting the door behind him.

'But the necrons are not all awakening,' he thought, 'many, but not all. It would take more than the Grey Knights to rise the hosts of the C'tan. Do the eldar know this?'

He was presently more concerned with what he sensed on Sifo II. Tyranid or necron? He stepped over to a window of the fortress he was in and looked out across the night-blackened forests of the planet. His eyes could pierce the shadow easily, though it brought him little to see except what he already knew was there: trees and the distant city of Sifish, built as it was on ridges painstakingly carved into the sides of distant mountains.

'Something's wrong,' Tiguirus suddenly thought, unable to sense the dreadful feeling in his heart that something was coming to Sifo II. 'I should know exactly what it is. Why then do I not?' Only by what the eldar had said did he even suspect the tyranids. Normally, he would see the invasion playing out before his mind's eye as clearly as a memory of something he had just turned his head from.

"Lord Tiguirus?" asked a commanding voice. "Have you completed your interoggation?"

"I have, Lord Constantor," Tiguirus replied, turning to his chapter master. The man stood taller than any Ultramarine. His short white hair reminded Tiguirus of Lord Calgar, that is, as he looked before Macragge fell. Constantor wore the gauntlets of Ultramar, further bringing Calgar to mind. However, Constantor was one-quarter Calgar's age, with a softer face that always seemed to be on the edge of smiling. Tigurius did not dislike Constantor, but he did think his duty as chapter master could use…improvement.

"Send all results to the Planetary Defense Forces," Constantor immediately replied with administrative authority. He turned to leave.

"My lord, I fear the tyranids may be upon us." Constantor turned around.

"From where?" he asked, "a splinter fleet?"

"The whole wrath of the hive mind I fear, from the webway." Tiguirus explained what he had learned. "I do not know how they got in, my lord, but my instinct tells me they are upon us." Constantor frowned.

"You are a psyker, and my best too. Tell me libarian, what do your predictions tell you?"

"Very little," replied Tigurius, "I fear something may be blocking them."

"You are not a man who is denied his powers, Lord Tigurius, your instinct is all that tells you of invasion? I fear the alien's poisoned words may have gotten to you," said Constantor sympathetically. Tigurius cringed on the inside.

"And your are not a man who ignores the warnings of his chief librarian," he replied, "or…you should not." Constantor shrugged.

"Perhaps if more evidence comes then I will hear what you have to say. Perhaps you need to meditate, clear your mind," Constantor walked off.

"Should we not destroy those ruins where the eldar were?" Tigurius asked.

"There's nothing to destroy, it's just a yawning chasm," replied Constantor, "besides, the Sifish government is plundering it."

Tigurius closed his eyes and drew a deep, thoughtful breath. He would need all the expanse of his vast intellect to take him through this question. Constantor's footsteps grew distant until they were gone, but Tigurius remained statue-still. Then, in a burst of speed, he turned around and drew his bolt pistol, which he fired. The genestealer behind him exploded.

"We are breached!" Tigurius cried as he reached out to the minds of his fellow Astartes, "the fortress is breached!" Immediately, he heard bolterfire rip through the halls. He rushed down the hallway of the ancient fortress. He entered one chamber and beheld Constantor and five Astartes, blasting at a hole in the floor. From it, scuttled genestealers, which were revealed whenever the sprays of blood and ichtor stopped. No alien set its claws onto the floor. Eventually the tide of aliens ceased.

"So you were right," Constantor cursed. "I have already alerted our brethren. The Planetary Defense Force will be alerted too, and distribute distress calls to nearby systems."

"My lord," Tigurius warned, "every planet for hundreds of lightyears around us is already embattled. We must call the rest of the chapter here."

And so the order was given: to every ship in the fleet of the Ultramarines. Come to Sifo II: the tyranids have come. The Ultramarines would once again defend a planet from the ravages of the hive fleet. This time, they would not fail.

…

"So what is the Black Tomb's story?" Afennor asked as he sat in isolation, next to one of Rarend's henchmen. They had been confined there, so not to interfere with Astartes duties. Afennor was glad to leave the terrors of the Neckrons, so he had heard them called, behind him. The cruiser the thunderhawk had docked in was now heading elsewhere, to a planet called Sifo II, though Afennor had not been told why. But why would the mighty space marines waste their breath on a weakling like him? He was just a plain human who could never change the galaxy.

"Well," the henchman began, his bionic eye staring through Afennor, "a dreadnought is the body of a great warrior, entombed after being mortally wounded, kept alive to serve the Emperor. The Black Tomb was the greatest in life, nothing less than the lord of Ultramar: the Ultramarine's domain in Ultima Segmentum." The henchman pulled his hood off as he sat forward. "Now, the Ultramarines, like all of the original space marine legions, had a primarch." Afennor had already had the name explained to him. "Theirs was named Roboute Guilliman. Upon Macragge, his broken but living body was stored in a special temple, trapped in a stasis chamber, deathly wounded from combat. When the tyranids came to Macragge for the last time, this temple was sieged. Summoned there was the greatest Ultramarine warrior…"

"The Black Tomb?" asked Afennor.

"Marneus Calgar, the Ultramarine's chapter master at the time. He was entrusted to the temple's defense. Though a master tactician, Calgar was too stubborn to pull his forces back and too cautious to try and evacuate Guilliman. He stubbornly, and some say blindly, fought the encroaching tyranid mobs, until his defenses were overrun. A last ditch effort by the Imperial Guard rescued the stasis chamber from the temple and recovered Marneus' mutilated body, but the tyranids had killed Guilliman. Calgar's error had killed the primarch." Afennor nodded, not daring to inquire as to the nature of these "tyranid" aliens.

"So Calgar is the Black Tomb?" Afennor asked.

"Yes. A dreadnought needed to be readied quickly to save Calgar in time. They used a wrecked dreadnought and repaired it with pieces cannibalized from the stasis chamber. When Calgar learned what had happened, he fell into despair and renounced his name. He now oversees the education of the Ultramarine's scouts." Afennor flinched under the henchman's gazing bionic eye. "You now know his real name, but never call the Black Tomb anything except that if you wish to stay out of trouble." Afennor nodded: he was good at staying out of trouble when it came his way, usually in the guise of a howling ork.

"What will happen to us when we get to Sif…Siff…the planet we are going to?" Afennor grew nervous when the answer wasn't forthwith.

"We will leave the Ultramarines and do what we can to survive," the henchman said. "It is time I told you about the tyranids…"


	10. The Beginning of the End

The autocannons opened fire. Howling, gibbering genestealers exploded as they rushed up towards the fortress, their bodies exploding into sprays of ichtor. From the crevices on the cliffface they poured, scuttling up the cliff and across the plains to the fortress. Since anti-tunneling efforts now blocked the genestealers, the tyranids were forced into an open charge at this, which the hive mind designated as a strongpoint.

Guardsmen filled the trenches around the fortress and the great ramparts of the building, adding themselves to its formidable defense of gun batteries. Their lasguns were raised and the autocannon emplacements were blazing. As the first genestealers crossed into the sighted killzone, a barking commissar fired his boltgun at the tyranids and the lasguns opened fire, punching more of the aliens off their feet. The wide-eyed guardsmen could see the genestealers through their scopes or at the ends of their ironsights. They were not falling fast enough, forty every few steps, but there were tens of thousands, and only a few hundred steps to the guard lines. It fell to each man to kill four or five hundred genestealers.

"The Emperor watches! The Emperor watches!" yelled the greatcoat-clad commissar over the blaring scream of the guns around him. The tyranids were coming closer, and their claws were sharp. "He watches us! He judges us! To flee will bring you a worse fate at His hands then…" the commissar swallowed, nervous beneath his sweltering cap. "…worse fate than what those aliens will bring!" He was transfixed by the size of the hoard. He thought about ordering a tacticle fallback.

Just then, Chapter Master Constantor strode up next to him, the chistled look of a man who'd seen centuries of combat stared forth from his visage.

"Prepare your men for their hour of glory, commissar," Constantor instructed. "The Emperor does indeed watch, and he will note your men's bravery when he accepts them into his eternal grace." The guns of the fortress fired. The genestealer swarm was blanketed in the holy fire of pure imperial guns, whose deep barrels had been the burning death of hundreds of ork invaders. The ancient guns yelled again and again until the pieces had heated to the point where the techpriests would need to maintain the artifact-weapons.

"Forward!" Constantor yelled, "drive the aliens back!"

"Affix bayonettes!" yelled the commissar as he drew his sabre. "For the Emperor!" As the smoke cleared, to reveal the genestealer swarm killed to its last tenth, with no more coming, the guardsmen billowed out of the trenches, their lasguns fixed with bayonettes, Constantor at their fore.

The carnage was terrible. Leaping, hacking genestealers killed guardsmen in twos and threes at a time. The crashing wave of the genestealers swept down the guardsmen, rolling over them with ease. One genestealer leapt into a group of five guard. Two tried to parry with the lengths of their guns, but found them chopped in twain while two others had dagger-claws thrust into their necks. The final fifth man stabbed the alien in the gut, but the beast chomped deeply into his throat, spilling his lifeblood all over himself. Everywhere, humans screams wailed and human blood was spilled in dark puddles across the grass. Only Constantor himself remained the bulkhead in the sea of alien. His fists smashed aliens to pulp or tore them into halves. He gave punches that could flatten oldgrowth to soft alien flesh.

"For the Emperor!" Constantor yelled, his cry mixed with the dying wails of guardsmen and the screeches of mindless tyranids.

…

Constantor had too great a love for heroics. He believed driving men into honest fights inspired others to vigor and valor. Instead, it thrust thousands of good Imperial warriors to meaningless deaths. Though there was no shortage of willing young guardsmen to be herded into the charnel by their burecratic overlords, Tigurus knew Constantor had been unwise.

"It is not a mistake that we can afford to make," Tigurius said to the assembled assault marines who had poised themselves on the ramparts. "Aid them, brothers." With the noise of a whole storm rolled into one moment, dozens of assault marines lifed off the wall and plunged into the fray.

The distant sound of fighting was all Tigurius could hear on the now lonely rampart: silence enough to concentrate on his thoughts. What, in all the galaxy, was clouding his mind?

Tigurius did not see the fighting down below, now in its climax. Constantor battled in the middle of a sea of genestealers, alone, while his brethren slaughtered their way to him. The surviving guardsmen fled for their trenches, no commissars standing over them to shoot them into bravery.

"While you remain faithful, you can never know true defeat!" Constantor yelled as he brought a squirming genestealer down onto his knee. The beast broke and was cast like waste to the ground.

Then, the aliens withdrew, shuddering, and peacefully forming a circle of emptiness around Constantor. The confused Ultramarine had never known these creatures could succumb to the poison of fear. So what…

"I find you at last," said a mysteroious voice. The genestealers parted and a space marine in brown armor pushed through them. "Your injury upon Macragge all those years ago made me believe…" the marine paused. "No. It is not you. But you look like him, you dress like him. He who fought me on Macragge: Guilliman's equal." Constantor stared through him.

"What are you?" Constantor asked.

"The enslavers strike soon, man of the Ultramarines Legion," the space marine replied from behind his old-style helmet. "And you are not he who can bring me to the Emperor. The Emperor must hear my judgement for mankind."

"You are no pure space marine, you are not dressed as a servant of the Emperor," Constantor spat. From behind his helmet, the man laughed.

"No, for I am the single greatest servant of mankind the Emperor shall have. The enslavers and I are the formula that will temper it into something invincible." He raised his hand above the ground. The claws and teeth of fallen genestealers cracked off their corpses and floated up to the man's open hand, turning into a molten mass and shaped by an unseen force like clay. "I am the truest servant, for I am Apollyon." The mass had solidified into a sword. He swung it around just as an assault marine dove on him from the sky. The two halves of the man crashed into the dirt.

"You disgrace that armor!" Constantor roared as he leapt forward, but the genestealers were already swarming him.

Apollyon strode through the genestealers and engaged the first Ultramarines. His blade stroked deeply into the back of an astonished assault marine, lashing out, and parrying a chainsword from a second. Apollyon's mind reached out to the Ultramarine and began to boil it. The Astartes lurched back, dropping his bolt pistol and lowering his sword. Apollyon cut through the man's body, beginning at the head and ending at the waist. The Ultramarine fell in half. Apollyon shook as a bolt pistol round clattered off his carapace. He reached down and took a fallen bolt pistol, then turned it on the shooter. He turned the pistol on another marine, but ran out of bullets before he could break the marine's armor. The assault marine was about to charge Apollyon, when he was dogpiled by swarms of genestealers, on Apollyon's will. The primarch strode over to the swamped Ultramarine and stabbed him to death, killing two enslavers in the process. Then he stabbed the marine coming up behind him.

"You are pitiful," Apollyon told the dying man before stabbing again. "The Hornet Legion would never have sunk so low."

Then, the genestealers around him exploded into blue fire, burining to ash in seconds. Apollyon hardened his flesh to the psyker attack and readied his sword to confront this new Ultramarine. Traitors, all of them, whose primarch had lacked the vision of a true lord of the Astartes. But as the smoke cleared, Apollyon could feel a familiar presence nearby, someone he had sensed thousands of years ago, probing his mind.

"It is you," he told Tigurus as the smoke cleared, revealing the field to be empty. The surviving Imperials were wither fleeing guardsmen or a half dozen assault marines dragging another half dozen away from the fight. Apollyon could see they did not notice him. "Yes, you who managed to isolate my mind amidst the collection of enslaver minds, you who picked me out from the hive mind."

"It is I," Tigurus replied, "So it is true then. You are the eleventh primarch. What is your name?" Apollyon answered. "Why did you attack Macragge?" Tigurus looked around him at the slain. "Why did you lead the tyranids here? Why have you been directing the tyranids?"

"I have directed them to test the galaxy," Apollyon replied, "only the strongest humans will live to rebuild the empire. While you struggle mindlessly against the infinite horde, I can end this eternal conflict. That is why I, and not you am a true servant of the Emperor." Apollyon lowered his sword. "Take me to Terra, or you shall be slain." Tigurus drew his own weapon: his ancient staff, and wielded it like a quarterstaff, its ends crackling with warp-energy.

"Never, traitor," replied Tigurius. He and Apollyon lunged at one another.

…

The cities of Sifo II were unanimously overrun with orks, save Sifish itself. In each of these cities, the tale was the same. Several thousand to several million orks choked the cities, either partially or totally, fighting the most brutal house-to-house combat that anyone in the campaign had ever seen. The Imperials were losing tens of thousands on every front every day. Ork and Imperial dead choked the streets like debris in the wake of a flood, festering, turning to skeletons, fattening the plagues of vermin that filled the jagged wrecks of Sifo II's once proud metropolises. This endless, grinding war of death was causing even some of the most seasoned, stoud Imperial commanders to sweat blood and tremble beneath the pressure.

So dawn came to Sifo II: the start of another painful day.

"WAAAGH!!!!" The red-eyed orks caused the sanctioned psyker's head to explode with a psychic backlash as they rushed through the streets of Outer Sifish, fifty short miles away from the capitol itself. Throwing up dust from their boots, ivory teeth dripping with scum, they boiled out of the bombed-out ruins towards the tank column. At the front was a horn-helmed warboss.

"Men, firing lines!" the major ordered to his company, taking refuge amongst the Leman Russ ranks. Guardsmen, both dirty bloody veterans and boyish recruits, blasted all they had into the incoming orks, killing five of the monsters even before the tanks could shoot.

Battle cannons roared, tearing apart houses in cascades of leaping concrete, crushing orks like maggots under an Imperial jackboot. Heavy bolters roared, blasting axe-wielding orks to the dirty floor to join the rancid dead who already lay in stinking piles in this part of Outer Sifish.

Then, a third wave of Imperial weaponry smashed into the orks. Droppods, blue and emblazoned with the U shaped Ultramarines insignia. Three in total, the pods crushed orks beneath their screeching forms. The doors yawned open and two of the pods disgorged blue-armored Astartes, who assaulted the orks, shooting eyes and necks to bring the beasts down fast. The third opened to reveal the Black Tomb, whose rattling guns made short work of any alien that stood within his blank gaze. Within seconds, the orks were destroyed without a single drop of Imperial blood spilt.

"By the Emperor, a dreadnought," whispered the colonel. The starved, dusty officer took off his cap and beat it against his hand to clean it.

"Major Ja…" began the major.

"I care little for your name," interrupted the sergeant among the Ultramarines, "communications are difficult. We fear the Shadow in the Warp." The colonel didn't know what that meant. "Where are we to find the chapter master of the Ultramarines?"

"The Ultramarines are headquartered in Platoss; the fortress near Sifish," replied the colonel, straightinging his back and ducking his chin forward like a man from a propaganda shot. "There has been some fighting near Platoss."

"Then they are here," the Black Tomb replied.

…

Apollyon won the duel. The Black Tomb personally escorted Tigurius back aboard the Ultramarines battle barge.

Tiguius lay immobile on the medicare table, his body ruined from Apollyon's sword. The deep red gash that ran up his was a cause of great concern. Despite the best efforts of the chapter, it was not healing. Aboard the Ultramarine's battle barge, Tigurius lay. The Black Tomb would not leave until he knew he had arrived in time to save the chief librarian. Only those inside their isolated chambers did not notice the chaos aboard the ship, caused by Tigurius' return. Afennor sighed in boredom and gazed out the window.

"I can hear you," Tigurius kept murmuring. "I can…I can hear you." "What?" Suddenly Tigurius sat up, tossing the medicare adept aside. "Get as far away form Sifo II as you can!" A direct command from the chief librarian could not be ignored, and the battle barge flew off, while the other ships of the Ultramarines remained, along with their ground forces. As soon as they could, Tigurius concentrated as hard as he could, putting as much energy into his psyker powers as he could.

"The tyranids are coming out of the webway right now! They're everywhere!" Tigurius screamed out loud, speaking what he had seen etched in Apollyon's mind. His eyes and nose began to bleed as adepts tried to restrain him. "The eldar was right! The eldar was right! The High Lords of Terra have to know!" Tigurius did three things then.

First, he sprayed blood out of his mouth, which would not have happened except that he was greviously injured and lethally low on strength.

Second, he focused his power, so to send his message straight to the core of the Imperium.

Third, he died, every inch of energy drained from him.

The loss of ancient Tigurius would pale in comparison to what happened next

…

The Cadian Gate had fallen ten years prior.

Where ten billion times ten souls had died, eight had lived. Where thirteen thousand years had not been enough, nineteen months had been plenty. Where over one trillion tones of metal had found itself too light, sixty tones had been enough. Where one million assaults had been turned aside, a single, terminal attack had found a breach.

It was a subtle and sly move; the crowning glory of the twentieth. Vashuss had sent his men in, found the cargo ships, and left after resting the huge virus bombs inside their depths. These unwitting carriers became the source of Cadia's death as these vessels drifted down to the planet, their bulk laden down with imports. The primitive scanners failed to find the well-crafted bombs with their jammers. When the inspectors threw open the doors, the bombs could not be missed. By then, it was beyond too late.

Cadia was engulfed in the inferno of a sun. Billions of souls screamed out in terror and pain, then turned to dust.

Abaddon planted his armored foot deep into the grey soot beneath his feet. There was not even a standing column that could attest to the existence of the kasr that had once been here. Now there was nothing but ash, over a meter deep in some places. His foot kicked the dust and a rare smile glinted off his pallid face.

'All that remains of the Cadians,' he thought, taking another breath of the planet's new atmosphere, gifted by Tzeench Even now he and his three brother gods were squabbling with one another, competing for the right to transform the ruin into their own paradise of hell.

"Well done," Abaddon said to Vashuss as he stepped away from his landing ship and towards the platform of earth that was presently rising out of the barren ash by Tzeench's dark will. Vashuss, his nose and nostrils dressed in a scaled breather, nodded his bald head and followed the Warmaster of Chaos to the platform. It looked big enough for the meeting.

"At last, I meet the man who gave me Cadia," Abaddon began, "successful. But the gods demand death and pain!" He turned about on Vashuss, eyes flaring. "The suffering I inflicted on the Cadians strengthened the warp so. Now you blast it to dust…"

"All power demands sacrifice. And we did it in your name, lord," replied Vashuss slyly. "But is it not worth the price? Can you not say the Cadian Gate was a worthy prize?" he looked out across the ashen desert. "All this, and in a moment. We did what over thirteen Black Crusades could not do. How many died fighting the Cadians Abaddon? How many servants sent needlessly to the gods? How many ships turned to rust? How many daemonic titans defiled? How much fuel used? How much time taken? With the energy that you spent on Cadia, how many bombs could you have snuck onto the planet?" From his power armor, Vashuss produced an unlikely object: an apple. "Why the Black Crusades? When all you had to do was lie?"

Abaddon understood as he stood on the platform's summit and flexed his talon-bearing hand. The Alpha Legion had selected freighters carrying apples to hide their bombs aboard. These ships were privately owned and not always subject to proper scrutiny when delivering their cargo to their rich customers. Such consumers always demanded speed with their deliveries. And so it was that apples destroyed Cadia by the Alpha Legion's deception.

"Do not test my patience, Vashuss," Abaddon dryly stated, scanning the winds. He could feel the warp.

"They come," Vashuss laughed, patting the shrunken head at his belt.

Nine explosions of warp-energy ripped apart the earth around the platform, each a half kilometer or so away. Nine tears in reality resulted: burning wounds in the very air itself. Streaming forth from these holes, came a vast number of the traitor legions.

From their hole glided the Emperor's Children, pink and black. Each of their number was back from conquest. Each marine held the leashes of six beautiful young slaves each, held captive by gold collars. These slaves, numbering six thousand, were dressed in revealing silk costumes, if dressed at all. Their faces were as barren in humiliated despair as the planet they stood on. At the forefront was Fulgrim himself, slithering on a serpentine body that gave way to a four-armed torso.

From their hole, writhing out like maggots from a wound, were the Death Guard. Dark green and boiled with rot, they marched out, their numb chanting mixed with the buzzing of the flies around them. At their head was the winged monster Mortarion.

Like fire from a daemon's eyes came the Word Bearers, from their own hole. They too chanted praise to Chaos, but unlike their Death Guard brethren, they howled praise to all Chaos. Lorgar himself led the infernal choir as blazing standards danced over his head, carried aloft by captives from their own conquest.

The Iron Warriors churned mechanically out of their own rift. They were unaccompanied by their famed tanks and engines of daemonic fury. Even from this distance, Abaddon could see their polished armor shining in the light of the distant sun. Perturabo led the brigade.

The Night Lords cackled as they flew out of their rift. Excited by the sight of the daemonic primarchs, the savage marines leapt into the air in vile glee. While the other legions came forth, the Night Lords hung back around their rift.

Angron himself was the solitary representative of the World Eaters. Almost identical to a Bloodthirster, the primarch marched forward, wild eyes taking everything in. Abaddon would only have one World Eater here. More than three would turn the meeting into a brawl.

The Thousand Sons were also few in number. Only a bare handful of sorcerers and Magnus the Red emerged from their breach. They took a moment to watch the other legions before heading towards Abaddon, perhaps plotting even now.

Representative companies from the Black Legion and the Alpha Legion emerged from their own rift, but their leaders already stood upon where they were supposed to be. Abaddon glared at Vashuss until he had headed down to the dust below while the traitor primarchs gathered around the platform, all of them paying no heed to the others. Only when the primarchs were gathered did Abaddon speak.

"Behold, the first step on the road to Terra!" announced Abaddon to the primarchs as he waved to the ruined landscape. "For thirteen thousand years we have languished in the Eye of Terror, awaiting this time. For thirteen thousand years we have lived in exile. Now the time has come to sieze the Imperum and bring it under our heel."

"Your heel," spat Angron.

"Under the heel of Chaos, almighty," Lorgar corrected him. "Not even Abaddon can deny the true gods their prize." Angron's reply was hushed when Abaddon spoke.

"Under our heel, lords of the faithful. And every scream will be a praise to Chaos, but every soul we ensnare will be a tribute to our conquest." He looked around the circle, eyeing each primarch in the face. "Under my guidance you will succeed where the other one failed. Under my leadership, you will stand before the throne and laugh."

"You are not Horus," Angron spat, "Horus could give me freedom, war, glory. What have you got to offer me, to offer Khorne?" His yells could be heard by the Night Lords, who perched like cowards by their portal, their primarch long dead.

"It is good that you have noticed that I am not the same weakling who failed you before," Abaddon replied with a voice that could freeze a flame. "I will give you all that and one more thing, something the other one could not give. I can give you victory." He rose his daemon sword. "Victory!" he howled as he planted its tip into the platform and took his hand away. "Magnus knows what is coming, do you not?"

"By Tzeench's eyes, I have seen it," Magnus muttered.

"Is it defeat you see, Magnus?"

"It is not defeat I see, the Imperium will wither, it is inevitable," Magnus stated, "but not even the Lord of Change c an be so sure anymore." Abaddon ignored the last part.

"Then swear your loyalties to me on this last Black Crusade," Abaddon demanded, if not too forcefully.

"Abaddon is the disciple of Chaos, the Word Bearers are his!" Lorgar roared.

"By Nurgle, the Imperium will wither," Mortarion hissed, "if you all join, then so will I."

"The Emperor's Children will join," Fulgrim said.

"And the Iron Warriors."

"And the Thousand Sons." All eyes turned to Angron.

"Promise me blood," Angron demanded. Abaddon obliged. "Promise me Terra, promise me the Emperor! Blood for the blood god, promise me honour!" Angron went on, and each demand, Abaddon swore to grant.

"Ah, the primitive cackling of Khorne," Fulgrim sighed with a youthful grin.

"WHAT!?" Angron raised his axe.

"Strike Fulgrim, and the Black Crusade ends before it begins," Abaddon warned. "Do not be so quick to serve the Emperor." Angron seemed to settle down.

"The World Eaters then. But only as long as there is blood!" Angron spat.

"That will be given in endless supply," Abaddon replied. Vashuss cleared his throat.

"The Alpha Legion is yours," he said, peering out from behind Magnus' height. All eyes turned to him.

"What is this whelp?" snarled Perturabo's emotionless voice.

"Vashuss. And he has already surpassed most of you," Abaddon looked around. "Each of you must conquer one world and turn it into a daemon world. Even the Night Lords must." He gestured to the little group by their portal. "The Alpha Legion has already taken their planet: this planet. So has Lorgar, so has Fulgrim. The rest of you owe me one daemon world as tribute and proof of your loyalties." The primarchs already knew of this demand. "The Imperium will soon be at war with the tyranids and with the necrons. Use the chaos of the titanic conflict to steal away one of their planets and bring them here. It will be from these nine worlds that our forces will march. When the new warp-rift opens up, they will come through, and the Imperium's darkest hour will begin."

Some thought of the warp as a bottomless pit. Soon, the pit would be thrown open, and all the chaos held within the bottomless pit would spill forth.


	11. The Death of Death

The Death World of Krieg had fought its enemies for over five hundred years. For centuries, the valiant but ugly Death Korps, as devoted to their Emperor as they were to their lasguns, battled in the nuclear sludge of their sterile world against waves upon waves, invasions upon invasions, of mutants, daemons, and orks, often at the same time. Generations of men leapt over the walls of their vile trenches and into the rancid fog of the battlefield, which flashed orange by cause of the artillery. These brave but desperate men would die, falling on the graves of their great grandfather's great grandfather. Though eventually the Kriegans would hammer enough of themselves to death against the foe so to defeat them, there would always be another invasion.

It was then a surprise when a shimmering image of the Emperor, as he had appeared during the Great Crusade, appeared over every Kriegan city and trench.

"My cherished people," began the vision, his words echoing in the mind of every loyal Imperial citizen on the planet, "I am your Emperor. For too long have you fruitlessly fought against these foes in pursuit of ultimate forgiveness. I have come here to impart victory unto you, and to remove your sadness. You are forgiven, every Imperial heart on this planet may feel my warmth." The Kriegans knew by instinct that this truly was their Emperor. They fell on their knees and wept, their tears fogging the lenses on their masks. After so much fighting, the Death Korps had forgotten the meaning of true victory.

"Know that after today, no mutant or ork or beast of chaos will threaten this world," continued the Emperor. "The time of suffering is over, the time of celebration may come, as dawn." Each Kriegan, from the trench-locked soldiers, to the newborn babes, saw a vision in their heads. It was of a golden tower, tall enough to rival the spire of the Emperor himself, stretching into the sky. Every piece of it shimmered golden beneath an equally golden sun, while titanic bas-relief carvings of Imperial saints gazed out from the very walls themselves. Atop the spire's utomost summit was an Imperial Aquilla: spreading its wings out across Kreig from its mighty gold nest.

"Build it, for me, for your victory today, for Krieg. Your enemies are all dead," the Emperor's holy voice thundered. "Build it."

…

[i]And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue he hath his name Apollyon –Revelations 9: 11 [/i]

…

Apollyon looked into the pit before him. His stood, his sword bloodied with the lifeblood of Sifish workers, at the edge of the pit to the webway gate, which sit at the bottom of this gaping pit. Deep inside, he could hear the mad chattering of enslaver voices, growing steadily louder as the swarm got closer to the surface. His eyes looked skywards.

"You…you have lost," Constantor promised, even as he lay in Apollyon's grip. The primarch knew precisely what Constantor was warning him about.

"Have I, indeed?" Apollyon asked the chapter master, who was presently on his knees, his hands ripped off, with Apolyare's taloned hand gripping the back of his neck. A struggle to escape would turn into decapitation, if not, then he would be mauled by the genestealers that swarmed around Apollyon.

"I could have gotten to Holy Terra. I could have warned the Emperor. He could have shown me where in the galaxy the Imperium is. I could have given some order to the way the enslavers emerged," Apollyon lamented while Constantor laughed. "But everyone I met was too damned stubborn. Now the new enslaver plague will not be as a mop: which is controlled, that sweeps the filth away. It will be like an upturned bucket. And whatever is strong enough to resist the spill will prevail."

"The plague stops here," Constantor laughed. Apollyon stepped back from the pit as a beam of pure sun pierced the clouds, driving all before it. The intense, by narrow beam of light shot straight into the hole, to where the webway gate was. Far below, an alien arch hidden amongst the ruins of an ancient eldar vault was incinerated, thousands of enslaver bodies with it. The lance of energy was unforgiving, turning flesh to dust in a heartbeat. Then, like lightning, it was gone, a deep bore in the ground was a testament to its strength. Unknown to the crew aboard the Ultramarine ship in orbit that had fired the lance, their divine shot had just drilled into a deeper part of the ruins where the webway gate was buried. Entombed within the ruins were the graceful shapes of three more webway gates.

"It is over, traitor!" Constantor yelled, his flesh burnt by the lance. "We have won!" Apollyon turned around and advanced on the dying Astartes, stepping across a mound of ashen genestealers, his armored body untouched by the heat. He lifted off his helmet.

"Do you truly think it happens only here?" Apollyon asked. He reached out with his right hand and clasped Constantor's head. Apollyon projected the enslaver's hive mind to him.

In his head, Constantor saw vision after vision of writhing, fleshy columns of enslavers emerging from holes in the ground, caves, ruins, or even from the glowing clouds in the center of naked webway gates standing brazenly in the open. Enslavers of all types, flooding out from their portal like a flood, but larger and faster. Their onslaught was not confined to the earth. Clouds darkened the sky as winged organisms flapped violently out. As the land grew dark under the flood, and the day turned to night under the bodies and spores of the enslaver's legions, the nightmarish shadows of special hive ships flickered into being in the atmosphere, alien energies leaping around them as they solidified their being in the material universe.

This vision was shown to Constantor one thousand times in a minute, with each individual sight lasting less than a second. One thousand pits, one thousand emergences, one thousand hive fleets. Through the madness of the hive mind, Constantor sensed that there were many more invasions than the ones he had witnessed.

"Man's darkest hour is upon us," Apollyon sneered, "but in the wake, mankind will have been hammered into the greatest power that this galaxy will ever know. Even greater than us." He took his hand away and Constantor fell down, shocked by the effects hive mind's contact had on him.

Constantor would awaken Emperor knows after long. The soft, warm forms of alien beasts were slithering over him and the sky was choked with dark brown clouds. He was not depraved enough to guess what had made them so brown. Behind him, he could hear chattering beasts still emerging from the pit. Why wouldn't the chapter's fleet fire again? Did Constantor dare to guess why?

"Your chapter is routed, Ultramarine. They came to Sifo II just as you wanted, right into our hands," Apollyon stated as he strode over to him, his helmet back on. Enslavers veered around him while trampling over Constantor. "Your fleet has nowhere to go: nowhere where my fleets cannot find them." Apollyon leaned down. Enslavers stopped trampling over him. "This is the way the chapter ends, not with a bang, but a whimper."

The last thing Constantor saw in his mind before Apollyon ordered the enslavers to attack him was a vision of the Ultramarine's battle barge being sundered apart by a pair of hiveships.

And so, all across the Imperium, hivefleets emerged. One for every rouge webway gate, one more for every gate-less planet that stood near a planet with a gate. They came out of the jungles, out of hives, out of cities, and poured into hives, into cities, into jungles. Planets besieged by orks, who were rocked with civil war between mutants and humans, found peace as every living thing was devoured. After a day, countless billions had been sacrificed to the enslaver's hunger. Trillions would follow.

…

'The souls of the living,' thought the Night Bringer to itself. All around it, the C'tan could feel the souls of the living dying off. Each lost soul meant one less soul could belong to the Night Bringer. 'I will stop this,' Night Bringer thought.

…

The world of Krieg continued to toil under the Emperor's gaze. A diagram of the Emperor's tower was drawn, but the architects of Krieg soon realized there wasn't enough gold on the whole world to coat the first meter of the tower's husk. Even as they lamented, the required metal materialized upon the naked, muddy ground of the construction site.

"Where will we get all the plasteel for these beams?" another architect asked, knowing that all the world's resources were squandered on bunkers and cannons.

"Go to your enemies." The Emperor's voice said. The Kriegans had no choice but to obey their master, and they found them dead but turned into plasteel! Vast seas of statues, orks and mutants and even some daemons of Nurgle, frozen and built of the purest plasteel that a builder could ever hope for. When the local priesthood raised their concerns about handling the bodies of Nurgle daemons, even plasteel ones, they sprouted stigmatic wounds upon their bodies and perished from them.

As the enemies were melted down to make construction material for the Emperor's tower, the Kriegans laughed and sang their praises to the Emperor. Some unseen force aided their work. Young workers carried massive beams on their own, trucks never needed fuel, the ground gave way to shovels like water, gravity refused to drag down their work even when one of the first beams erected failed upon the muddy ground it was founded on. Before the week was out: the Kriegans had built the foundations to their tower: a century's work in seven days.

The Emperor truly protected them.

…

_And with strange aeons even death may die. -H.P Lovecraft_

...

The Blackstone Fortress hovered beside the Nero, high above the doomed world of Pompeii, its squalorous cities locked in a brutal was of attrition with one another, while green-skinned invaders rampaged across it in almighty warbands. No one on the world had seen sixty years in over a century. As bad as it might have been, it was well off by modern standards. When the hive fleets emerged from the webway four months ago, they stained the stars brown with their writhing, swarming numbers. Now it was a blessing to be free of their alien touch, no matter how bitter the surface's conflict was.

The chaos space marines did not yet notice the eldar.

"Do not lower your gaze, do not let your protection fall," Maugan Ra warned the warlock coven while they sat in a circle, meditating, surrounding the Grey Knights with a protective field of psyker energy. "If he suspects it, we will have come here for nothing."

…

The Night Bringer could find no soul-stealers here. Nowhere, wherever it looked, did it find one of the lethal clawed things whose species violated the galaxy from arm to arm. It displeased it. Night Bringer had dispatched its necron minions at one of the great soul-stealer fleets and blown its ugly mass to oblivion. The ancient C'tan could feel each death as the fleet was disintegrated by the green, lashing pulses of the tombships. Each individual death: a candle out. But no souls came to it, no feast to be had from that conquest. So, tongue dulled by the taste of nothing, Night Bringer moved its minions to this world.

Hovering over the wasteland of shell-blasted squalor, Night Bringer beheld the monstrous greenskins battling the humans in their trenches. Grenades exploded, lasguns fired, machineguns rattled. Night Bringer could feel each of them die. Even from its position, floating miles above like a wisp of storm cloud, it could feel the deaths of the young men and their brutish enemies. Each death was like a single pebble of sugar falling to it: savory but short. These deaths were but a simple taste. Greater feasts awaited elsewhere. And Night Bringer knew it would have to move fast if it wanted to gorge itself before the vast fleets of soul-stealers did.

As a bright explosion lashed through the greenskins, the Night Bringer's lips grew sweet with souls. Then it was gone: the deaths enjoyed and absorbed. There was no need to call its forces here. Let them kill, let them die, let them ferment for later eating. While there were other feasts amongst the stars, their precious souls being consumed by the souls-stealers, whose bodies released nothing savory upon death, Night Bringer could not stop and wait. Each passing moment meant fewer souls.

The Soul-stealers had to die. All of them.

As the Night Bringer rose up through the clouds, it contemplated the soul-stealers. They were familiar somehow, like an anicient dream imagined on a moonless night, millions of years past. It could not rest its scythe on the detail, but there was something cleanly there, reminding it of an ancient enemy.

'The Old Ones?' the Night Bringer wondered as it passed out of the atmosphere, through a cloaked cloud of necron ships. 'Could it be they?' The thought was unsettling, even for one such as it. The logical thought that came to Night Bringer whilst it rose into the stars was that if the Old Ones had returned, then it and the other C'tan would know. Yet no whispers had been hurled across the void. No Old Ones had arisen.

Therefore, it could only be…the one species whom not even the C'tan could defeat. Night Bringer was beyond fear, but deep down inside it, uncertainty blossomed.

Just then, the heavens themselves lit up, and the lithe, darting ivory shapes of eldar ships swept down upon it. They avoided Night Bringer, swooping instead for the necron ships. Like a swarm of flies they were, darting, whisking, flying whimsically about, their cannon singing stars at the ships that they could not see, but sense.

In a mental gesture, the Night Bringer ordered his fleet to return fire. This fleet was not the mighty sailships or sprawling destroyers of the eldar fleets. Night Bringer was astonished at what it realized was a great squadron of eldar fighters!

'Suicide,' thought Night Bringer as its lashing scythe sliced an eldar plane in twain, releasing the eldar's soul into his spirit stone. All around the Night Bringer, the leaping explosions of eldar rockets and necron weaponry leapt up, playing a brilliant show of colour in the vaccume the world's low orbit. Eldar craft burst apart, their pilots slaughtered. Whole wings disintegrated in single passes by gauss weaponry Such a merciless battle was the Night Bringer's way.

As more eldar ships were swept apart by the necron fleet, which now uncloaked to reveal their crescent forms, Night Bringer looked to the stars and saw the forms of the eldar ships themselves come towards it. Aboard each: more souls. Night Bringer leapt through the emptiness, levitating, scythe ready, necron ships breaking away from the massacre and lunging at the fleet, necron ships flashing up behind it.

The two tides met, necron veruss eldar, death versus dying. Night Bringer howled with glee as eldar ships came apart, taking their crews with them

'Now this is feast!' Night Bringer thought as it reached into a gap blown in an eldar ship to wrench a struggling crewman out. Opening its mouth, it cast the being's soul inside. Night Bringer could taste the modest flavor of a single eldar soul warm its senses. It was ecstasy whilst death flickered all around it.

Then, through the sight of gauss fire, rockets, and flaming eldar ships, Night Bringer beheld a single warrior leaping out of the hull of a single, small eldar ship that lay apart from the battle. The creature was clad in armor made to look like bones. Its head was skeletal, its large body glistened black and white. Its shoulders were carved like skulls, one black and one white. In its hands, it carried a monsterous scythe. Did the creature seek to mock the Night Bringer with its appearance?

With the rest of its fleet distracted, the Night Bringer fell upon this warrior, splitting from the combat. As the creature fired bullets from its weapon into the C'tan, to no effect, the ancient being loomed over the younger whelp.

"Do you truly believe you can kill death?" asked the Night Bringer to the doomed alien as it took him in its grasp.

"I do not run when death calls me! My name is Maugan Ra!" the creature howled defiantly. Night Bringer scoffed and slashed its scythe into Maugan Ra, opening his bony armor, spilling his blood to freeze in space, slaughtering him and releasing the soul to the Night Bringer, who wrenched it from the armor of the being.

'Vile spirit stones,' thought the Night Bringer as it consumed the defiant suicide's soul. It was filled with the sweetness and ecstasy of a soul that had fermented for thousands of years, roasted in death, fried in life, and fermented by the ages. It was like consuming a single feast in one bite. The Night Bringer savored the flavour of a soul it had rarely ever encountered. Such a prize! Such a wonder! Night Bringer could not believe that it had been so fortunate to have a soul of such decadence come leaping towards it.

_the harvester of souls hewn by the harvester of souls _

…

Skander Moorus could not believe the C'tan did not see them. He was only a kilometer away. He had not yet engaged his ships due to the fact that neither fleets had yet fired upon him. As he looked out the window of the Nero and still came to terms with what his traitor eyes saw, he stopped for a moment and wondered if he was being tempted to use the Blackstone Fortress. So what if he was? Chaos would protect him from the consequences.

"How does the alien not see our ships?" asked the Grey Knight beside him.

"Why should we care?" spat Skander, "by chaos, the thing is the Night Bringer itself. All power to the warp-cannon and fire on the alien." From the window of the Nero, Skander saw the Blackstone Fortress turn upon the Night Bringer, who seemed to be laughing as it shook the skeletal alien's body. "The chaos gods will reward us for the destruction of this hateful beast," laughed Skander. "Fire!"

…

Night Bringer understood at the last minute. The eldar's psykers knew its weakness, the eldar psykers had shielded death's gaze from the ancient cannon and its joyous feast on Maugan Ra had tempted it not to look harder. It was too late now.

The Blackstone Fortress fired, and the Night Bringer disintegrated.

As the storm of energy from the eldar weapon comsumed the remainder of the two fleets, a single signal was sent out across the stars. It echoed onwards, to every tombworld, every warrior, every C'tan. The Night Bringer had fallen, its cause of death not specified. These modern creatures of life could kill the Star Gods. Augmenting this was the fact that if nothing was done, there would be nothing left for the C'tan to consume.

In reply, a single signal was sent out. It began on Mars, then, like an echo through a sunless cavern, it bounced to every corner of the galaxy. Humans of the Adeptus Mechanicus experienced a slight, brief malfunction in their machines. When they checked them, some found the machines emitting a faint electric signal that vanished swiftly. The blamed it on a trivial miswiring. Unknown to them, their machines had been unwitting conductors for the alien signal. The Mars signal found the ears of every necron tomb. Even Deciever sensed it, but it did not try to stop the signal, knowing too well what would happen if it did not.

"The enslavers are back again," Deciever muttered to itself, "And now one of us is dead. The situation is serious indeed. Everything that challenges us must die." It swore never again to hide from the enslavers.

Across the stars, every necron ever built was rising up to take the galaxy back for the Star Gods. Tombworlds in Ultima Segmentum, left alone by the flesh-seeking tyranids, awoke to unleash their own swarms. Machines never seen since the days of the Old Ones.

And so tomb dueled hive, gausss against evolution, crescent against cethlapod, machine against flesh. Upon necron-hosting worlds where the tyranids already were, the battle was instantaneous. Elsewhere, some travel was needed. In Ultima Segmentum, millions of necron warships assaulted the hive fleets from the rear in the skies of that depopulated segmentum. Gauss weapons flayed tyranid into oblivion, leaving nothing for the fleet to reabsorb.

The eldar's gambit had paid off.


	12. Afennor's War

The Kriegans were dazzled nightly by the green flashes in the sky, which passed over their heads. It appeared that a cloud of squid battled a murder of flying crescents. The debris from battle rained down whenever there was strife in the stars. The Emperor's holy voice assured them that they beheld nothing but mere distractions to their works at hand. By now, the tower stood two kilometers high: massive for only one month's work. The Kriegans found, to their astonishment, that their bodies required no food and no water. They never tired. Fanatics interpreted this as a sign of His will.

"Build it higher," the Emperor commanded again, His voice ringing in the minds of the planet. "Use these. They will help you build." From the sky rained a golden drizzle of cool water to refresh the summer-struck world. From each tiny droplet rose a man, muscular, tall, and bald, with silver eyes and gold metallic skin. The army of these millions stepped up to the tower, mutely helping the humans build it. The Kriegans found these golden men a tremendous help as they flew through the air on invisible wings, instinctively knowing what needed to be done.

Alongside these strange men, the Kriegans worked, adding scores of meters to the tower's height every day. By the end of the first week of help, they had added a whole kilometer to the tower's height.

The Kriegans, who were so proud of their achievement, sent an astropathic message to a nearby world, begging it to send a representative to see the tower. Yet as the astropath sent his message, he was engulfed in blue fire that warped and changed him until he had transformed into a slobbering heap of pallid flesh, covered in eyes and feathers.

The locals asked the Emperor what had happened, turning to the sky, and screaming their question at the clouds. When His voice did not answer them, they tried to coax an answer from their lord. A beautiful maiden, whose fortune had allowed her to be birthed a psyker, was ritually slaughtered on a stone before a replica of the Kriegan's vision of the Golden Throne.

In response, the clouds turned black. The golden helpers melted like wax as a black rain fell from the sky, coating everything black. The tower's construction was endangered as workers lost their eyesight beneath the oily precipitation. One worker tripped on the scaffolding and fell four kilometers to his death. A deep, stern voice commanded the world at once:

"Get back to work!"

Terrified, the Kriegans ran to the tower to continue building it. At once, the clouds vanished, as did the rain. The oil slick that coated the tower was gone and the broken worker who fell found himself standing back up, body mended.

"Good," replied the Emperor's voice.

…

He was in a refugee camp on the world they had crashed on, blending in with the rats that came to feed on the squalor.

Afennor threw a handful of water from the basin into his face. He looked up into his sunken eyes in the mirror and noted his changes. His narrow face was even thinner. His short hair was growing longer and though he was still too young for a beard, he could spot bits of mud clinging to the downy on his chin. He'd seen more of the galaxy than any teenager of his world. Three planets so far: including this one: Sifo VI.

'It must have been my birthday by now,' he thought. 'Am I sixteen yet?' It didn't matter how old he was. He pulled the flak jacket over his bare chest and buttoned it up, hiding the red scar he carried from the crash. He stepped away from the mirror and the basin, and left the tent. It was one of many around the crashed thunderhawk, whose portside engine was damaged where an alien gun had shot it. When Afennor looked at the craft, his impression was that it had been burned by acid. This was unsurprising, since these aliens, these "tyranid" fought with acid. Afennor had only seen them alive once: when he was aboard the thunderhawk and being blasted away from the wrecked Astartes battle barge over the world they were now on. Sometimes, Afennor heard one of Rarend's henchmen lament how the alien ship caught them as they fled Sifo II.

Afennor walked through the city of tents that had gathered around the thunderhawk for safety. As inquisitorial persons, it was the rights of the henchmen to aid the scouts whom the Black Tomb led as their teacher. As their slave, it was Afennor's duty to bring them whatever they wanted. While it was strange for humble henchmen to be in the presence of one so mighty as the Black Tomb, it was the only option there was. That, or the Black Tomb would be tended by refugees and PDF guardsmen, who had fled their homes to escape the tyranids that attacked the planet. One in every twenty people of the tens of thousands who surrounded the thunderhawk were PDF guardsmen. Afennor wore one of their flak jackets he'd "borrowed" and was struggling to get his hands on one of their lasguns.

Afennor walked up to the ruined thunderhawk and into the tent that had been pitched in front if it, wherein resided Rarend's henchmen. He'd washed his face. Now it was his job to wait inside their tent for more orders. He looked at the five remaining henchmen; those who had made it aboard the thunderhawk before the aliens destroyed the battle barge. They sat around a table where a map was laid.

"This city is where most of the refugees are from. It was evacuated when the first spores landed," explained one of the henchmen. "The city Is gone now, overrun. Incendiary drops by the Imperial Navy reduced it to ash to clear out the infestation. The tyranids are now supposed to be advancing up this ridge, two hundred kilometers east of us. PDF forces aren't holding. We will have to flee soon." One of the henchmen lifted a steaming tin bowl of stew to his lips and sucked some back.

"The Astartes should have some idea of what to do. If the Black Tomb's men can find a beacon aboard their ship, we might have reinforcements from the Ultramarines."

"They're all on Sifo II."

"Some must have escaped."

"I doubt…" the henchman quieted himself for saying such a thing. He apologized.

"What we are seeing here is a textbook example of one of their spearheads. Notice them just driving into the PDF line?" the speaker indicated the map and its counters. "They're testing it for weaknesses with one big thrust. This invasion cannot be too deeply underway. Therefore some of the vanguard organisms might still be alive." There was a general nod of agreement.

"And ten thousand refugees in the wilderness is a tempting target," muttered Afennor. "But we have the Black Tomb." It was more to himself, but everybody heard.

"Shut up, boy!" one henchman, whom Afennor knew as 'master' but his friends called him Brukks, barked. "When we reach an inquisitorial fortress the first thing I'm going to do is write a citation to their office to have you turned into a servitor." Afennor's eyes lit up. They were going to make him part of the Inquisition?

"Well, he is right. One lictor or ravener, or even a broodlord won't last against the Black Tomb," one henchman pointed out, pointing his finger at Brukks from beneath his robed hand. "Now, if one does get loose among the camp, withdraw to the thunderhawk and wait for it to finish with the other refugees. If the guardsmen don't take it down, the Black Tomb will."

"What happens when the tyranids approach our camp?" asked another henchman. Brukks answered this one.

"Malos and I talked about this. We thought of talking the Black Tomb into sending the refugees off in one direction while we continue in another. The tyranid swarm will slaughter the refugees and PDF, giving us some time to reach a more secure location. We've heard rumors of a more fortified city about three hundred kilometers west. It would be one of the last places on this world to fall. Local accounts of it suggest a strong Ecclesiarchal presence within it. It would be good to again bask in the Emperor's light, even in this forsaken place."

"Agreed," said the henchman as he finished his stew. "What tendril do you suppose this is?"

"It had the look of a leviathan tendril. The purple crests on the creatures we saw in that guardsman's photograph are a giveaway."

"Boy! Fetch me some more," the henchman tossed Afennor the empty tin.

"The kitchen limits one serving per…" Afennor began.

"Then steal it." Afennor slouched out of the tent, dragging his feet. It wasn't that he couldn't steal: he could be in an out without the chef knowing. What bugged him was that he himself hadn't eaten all day.

When he pushed the flap to the tent open, he came face-to-face with a pallid head, its jaws replaced by a nest of tendrils. Afennor screamed and jumped back inside the tent. Everyone inside shouted as he leapt through their meeting and wiggled under the tent to escape. Afennor felt someone grab his ankle, but he slipped out of the grasp and scuttled into the open hatch on the front of the thunderhawk.

"Tyranids!" Afennor yelled as the sound of distant gunfire reached his ears. He tripped on a box that lay on the ground and fell. He heard three men come up behind him: three of Rarend's henchmen. One of them was Brukks.

"Emperor's mercy, how did it get so close?" asked Brukks.

"That's not what I was thinking. That tyranid had a grey crest. There's only Ultima Segmentum tyranid fleets could be coloured so," replied another. As a line of scouts rushed into the thunderhawk, shouting to one another, Brukks showed fear, for he first time in Afennor's memory.

"A second hive fleet? On the same planet? Unheard of." He was interrupted as one of the Astartes scouts came over to him.

"We are going to try and fly away as far as we can with the limited repairs we have enacted, on one engine," explained the scout. "Just as soon as the Black Tomb is returned to us. He fights the swarm." Brukks pointed to the scout.

"How could a bloody tyranid swarm get so close to us without recon noticing it?" Brukks demanded, "you're supposed to be the Emperor's…"

"I would expect a more civil tongue from an Inquisitorial servant," replied the scout, young but wise. "As it is, the whole camp appears to be overrun by the aliens. If you want your life to endure, do as we say." The scout cleared his throat and Afennor caught a pitying glance from the scout. He knew what it meant. The scout looked at Brukks.

"Your slave is unneeded for our survival and supplies are limited..." Afennor was already scampering into the ship, his light feet taking him through twists and turns through the compartments. He made a hiding place out of the most unlikely of places.

"Boy! In the name of the Inquisition, come out!" Afennor heard Brukks shouting as he hugged the shadows in the hiding place he'd found. "Check the rafters! He can hide like a rat!" Afennor wasn't in the rafters. It was a good thing the thunderhawk had used all the shells for its big cannon on the top of it, whatever it was called. Otherwise, he wouldn't have a hiding place.

…

The Black Tomb stomped through the bio-fire that leapt up from the dozens of tents around him. PDF guardsmen had formed a ring around him that moved when he did. Their lasguns were crackling constantly, picking off organisms through the cracks in tents. Here and there, when the Black Tomb stepped, it crushed a human body beneath its tread.

All around him, the Black Tomb could see the forms of panicking refugees fleeing in all directions, tyranid warriors mixed in with them, scything them down. Guardsmen shots hit their own as much as they did tyranids. Whenever an alien best lunged at their group, the Black Tomb made the tyranid vanish in a spray of ichtor. He only shot when he needed to. Ammunition was limited. The Black Tomb probably didn't have one bullet for every tyranid he would encounter here. He was making his way back to the thunderhawk.

As he turned the corner, he saw the great silhouette of the thunderhawk through the bio-flames. The way to it was blocked by a seething wall of termagants. The PDF guardsmen yelled all around him as they burst off shots into the grey-crested beasts like madmen.

If only the guardsmen under his command had been so fanatical around Guilliman's stasis cell. The Black Tomb shuddered with the memory. He stared dispassionately forward. A few of the wriggling gaunts were falling to lasgun shots but it was drops in a bucket. If this was his second end, then he would die like a true hero of the Ultramarines.

The Black Tomb's storm bolter blazed as he rushed the wall, spreading his shots over the largest area. Tyranids died in droves, heads exploding like balloons or bodies tossed into the air by the momentum of the shots. The Black Tomb was briefly blinded as a wave of carnivorous ammunition was thrown into his front. They did not harm him, which was better than what the guardsmen got. The Emperor was with those screaming men.

Just like Macragge.

The Black Tomb stomped through the mass of gaunts, his feet crushing the beasts. Some of the beasts tried grabbing onto him to slow him down. But the monster could not be slowed by something so hopelessly feeble. Breaking out from the other side, he rushed the thunderhawk as its heavy bolters sprayed the tyranids around him with shells.

Moments later, the Black Tomb was loaded. With a thundrering growl that gave credit to the ship's name, the thunderhawk took off, shearing off the tops of tents, people, and tyranids as it flew low to the ground, abandoning the camp. The chaos grew further and further behind them as the remains of their damaged engine tried its best to carry them.

The flight lasted six minutes, ending as they crashed into the canopy of a tall woodland.

They had escaped, for now.

…

"I don't know where he hid," finished Brukks as he firmly clasped Afennor by the shoulders, holding him in front of the Astartes scout, "could you spare but one bullet?"

"No," replied the scout. "One gunshot may attract the aliens." He walked away from the pair. "Make yourself useful and help us salvage what we can."

The thunderhawk lay amidst a carpet of downed trees, on its side, broken and smoking. Scouts and the Black Tomb tended to the wounded machine, humming prayers to its machine spirit. The other scouts were tending to the three men who had died in the crash: the pilot amongst them. Rarend's three surviving henchmen stood around Afennor, in front of the thunderhawk wreck.

"Perhaps we should, a long march lies ahead. And may the Emperor we with the souls we lost this day," said Brukks. He bowed his head twice: one for each dead friend. "Now, the Astartes need…" a distant alien rasp echoed to them through the night-dark forest. Brukks released Afennor and turned with the other two to look into the trees from where the sound had came. They saw two scouts with shotguns duck into the trees. It was followed a minute later by the sound of a shotgun blast. Both scouts returned, dragging the body of a dead warrior between them.

'If that didn't alert the aliens then another shot for Afennor won't hurt,' Brukks thought. He wasn't a murderer, but supplies were too scarce to spend on a useless mouth. Only then did he notice that Afennor had vanished.

…

The tower on Krieg was almost complete, but the Kriegans were struggling to construct the point of it. The tall imperial aquilla that was to make its nest atop the tower was proving to be more difficult in its construction than anyone had ever realized. The Emperor's blessings had made the building of the great thing easy, but as they dragged it atop the tower, they found it grew heavier. So they built it out of lighter materials: the debris of war, cobbled together, to represent the lives lost to win the victory.

Though the placing of the eagle had been successful, they now found themselves facing the most ugly sight imaginable. The eagle was so crude that it lacked the strong majesty of an eagle. Instead, its wiry neck built from the shards of derelict tanks and feathers made from combat fatigues of slain men made some think of a two-headed vulture.

"Your victory is complete," the booming voice of the Emperor spoke. "Your reward shall be an endless day." He made true on his word as night across Krieg was banished along with the stars, and the moon, and the sun. The Kriegans stood dumbfounded beneath a glowing shield of blue that wreathed their planet's sky: and endless source of light for their whole planet. "Now," the Emperor spoke, "toil more! Make your Emperor proud!" The Kriegans carried on working, dreaming up new building projects under the eyes of the two-headed vulture that stood on top of their tower. It was all they could do now. Something had siphoned their need to eat, love, fight, or work from their minds. All the Kriegans could do now was labor for their Emperor; it was all they wanted to do.

This ignorance made them oblivious to the realization of what the glowing shield that covered their sky actually was. It made them ignore it when the Emperor ceased communicating with them. It made them oblivious to their lack of visitors. If they had a desire to do anything except work for their Emperor, they would quickly understand the truth.

Magnus the Red looked out across Krieg, his new daemon world. Conquered without firing a shot, now it had been sucked into the warp to join the armada that would strike Holy Terra when the time came at last to attack. From atop the tower, built by the Kriegans, Magnus' one eye could see the mindless humans were already toiling to build the next temple to Tzeench.

…

"They come my lord," whispered the scout to the Black Tomb. From his suit, the Black Tomb could see the trees through the evening's dark as though it were day. This was the fifth attack they'd sustained in as many days. His cannon was thirsty, but had very little sustenance for it. Five of his scouts had died and their weapons distributed to the inquisitorial personnel. Even Afennor had a weapon: a sniper rifle. He hid in the thunderhawk, coming out when the tyranids came. He presently crouched inside the open hatch, aiming the weapon out.

"They come," he muttered darkly as his ancient ears heard the oncoming chatter of alien voices. Through the trees, hundreds of them, against twenty-one scouts and their guns. The Black Tomb thanked the Emperor, hearing only the voices of the smaller creatures. The throaty roar of a canifex would chill even him in this scenario.

Darting, lashing, through the trees they came. Shadows at first, but bigger and more distinct the closer they got. This was the biggest attack yet. Packs of the smaller creatures lorded over by nine of the warriors. The Black Tomb prayed to the Emperor for the fifth time in as many days, asking for forgiveness when he died.

A shot from the servant-boy took the head off one of the larger creatures. The boy's marksmanship was astounding. The Black Tomb saw in him the makings of a space marine, not only in his shooting, but also in his survival skills. Were they not so stranded; he already would have extended the offer to the boy.

The scouts fired next, one shot at a time, so to spare ammunition. The surviving scout sniper fired, matching the youth's shot with equal results. They now had seven warriors to contend with. If they were lucky, they could break the smaller creatures' link to the hive mind. The Black Tomb stomped forward, just as the tyranids came within one hundred and fifty yards. He let out a short burst from his cannon, shredding a tyranid warrior to pieces. Then, as they closed within one hundred yards, the beasts did something strange.

They turned around and fled the other way.

"Never do…" the Black Tomb heard Afennor fire his rifle again, clipping off the head of another tyranid beast. "What can we make of this?" He found the henchmen, standing by the thunderhawk. "I cannot explain this. Is there something yet about these beasts that has escaped my experience?"

"No my lord" replied Brukks. "Perhaps some charade of their mad xenos minds?" The Black Tomb knew the tyranids well. There was always a plan.

"I shall go forward, alone," the Black Tomb said as he returned to his scouts. "One man remain behind me at a safe distance. The remainder, remain here." The Black Tomb strode out across the forest then, bending down bullet-ridden trees to carve his way deeper into the unknown, stepping over fly-covered tyranid corpses from the previous attacks of the other days.

Silence prevailed inside these woodlands. The mindless chatter of alien maws held no power in the Black Tomb's ears while he bent another tree aside with an ancient black power fist that could, and had, crushed a man in full power armor. He pushed up to the first fallen tyranid and bent down as far as the bulky machine would go in order to examine the thing. It was indeed slain, killed by a holy bolter rocket. The hive mind did use massed rush tactics more often than it did anything else. Yet these floods were not wastes. Each thing had a purpose. The Black Tomb thought to his ancient days, his studies, and his battlefield lessons to find an answer to the behavior.

There was one campaign that stood out. During the tyranid advance into Ultramar, during his last days as Lord Calgar, the Black Tomb had battled the swarm alongside a chapter of pitiless die-hards, who'd been brought into existence in the hopeless battle of halting the hive mind's assault into Ultima Segmentum. Titled the Shadow Angels, in honor of their role as hit-and-run troops who moved in under the Shadow in the Warp, seven-score-and-nineteen of their battle-brothers had once been caught in an ambush. The tyranids used expendable soldiers to attract their forces and draw them away from a valuable target by retreating. The Shadow Angels had been good fighters, but not even they could save Ultima Segmentum.

'I shall not let that happen again,' the Black Tomb turned his massive form about and trundled back to the wrecked thunderhawk. 'Recall the mistakes of your slain brothers, live to avenge them.' He returned to the thunderhawk.

"The beast flees, but we need not know why. Continue your sentry duty as usual and the beast will show itself surely," the Black Tomb thundered to his scouts. "Remember, the enemy works to kill you always. And take note of even the most subtle, unassuming action."

"Yes my lord," the scouts replied in near unison. The Black Tomb looked up at the servant-boy, who had also spoken. The boy put his hands over his mouth and prepared to slip into the thunderhawk.

"One moment, boy," the Black Tomb said as his stomping feet took him to the ramp. The child straightened his back and stood at attention like a guardsman, shouldering the heavy rifle like he would a lasgun. He could not have done that my error, a man of the Imperial Guard had taught him how to stand like that. "What is your name?"

"Afennor Aeoiar Zodan," replied Afennor. "Conscript, been so since I was nine. Ork killer. I fought on the planet…"

"Where did you learn to shoot, Zodan?" asked the Black Tomb.

"In the city where I fight in, I shot orks from windows. They teach you to aim for the eyes, and on an ork, that's an easy thing to do because they glow and stuff," Afennor replied timidly. "And…and I learned to shoot good. I really do like this gun…um…much. Do you think I did well?" he was nervous.

"Black Tomb?" asked a scout.

"One moment," the Black Tomb told the man, then he resumed with Afennor, "you are a very talented young man. I assure you, if you had been born under the gaze of the Astartes, you would be invited to one of the fortress-monasteries. Perhaps if we make it out…" he let Afennor's imagination fill in the rest and watched his eyes open saucer-wide. "It is a difficult life and not an easy test. But perhaps you could consider it, Afennor Zodan." As he turned to the scout, he heard one of the inquisitorial henchmen behind him whisper a vulgarity.

"Brother dreadnought," the scout said, "our long range scanners indicate no large warm-bodied life out for one hundred meters," he showed the Black Tomb his reader to verify the claim.

"The tyranid is a fast beast. Perhaps…" the Black Tomb reached into his mind for an answer. During the Caeross Crusade, which had blunted one of the largest tendrils in the Ultima Segmentum hive fleets, and ultimately saved worlds like Malamrecht and Catachan, he'd encountered beasts that tunneled. Even so, the sensors would detect that too.

"There is only one thing in all the galaxy that kills with such speed and leaves no signature for our tracers to follow," the Black Tomb muttered in disgust. Two hive fleets, and now…them? "Death's locusts leave their fingerprints here. We may battle the necron." Shocked at the word, the scouts gathered together tightly. Rumors of necron awakenings had reached their battle barge before they'd run into the tyranids over Sifo VI.

"Pray to the Emperor it is not so," one scout whispered. He sounded afraid. The Black Tomb would make a point of having the man examined upon their escape.

No sooner had he thought this, when a dreaded necron wraith arose from the naked ground, leaving no sign of its passage, as soft as a cloud of steam with cruel talons as sharp as a diamond knife. Centuries of experience served the Black Tomb well and he fired a single round. The shot broke into the thing's neck, severing the power flow. A sporadic flurry of shots punched it to the ground. The thing vanished in an explosion of green energy before it hit the ground.

"Emperor save us," whispered one of the henchmen in terror. "First two hive fleets and now these things."

"The necron could erase the invading swarm if the Emperor is on our side," suggested another henchman.

"The Emperor does not control the necron," thundered the Black Tomb. "Sentry duty is now changed. We stay inside the thunderhawk and minimize our heat signatures. I shall remain outdoors on low power to watch for our machine enemies if they prove aggressive." He looked around the trees. "One wanderer, that is what I believe we encountered just now. As it is, I believe the necron may be slaying our tyranid foes. But be warned, for they are not our kinsmen. Stay cautious, stay together, and remember, the Emperor protects."

"The Emperor protects," echoed the group.

"The Emperor protects," said Afennor.


	13. The Stranger that Afennor Saw

It was night.

Asseah knew that from this day on her young son Rucknor would be only a memory to her. He would cease to be a person who grew older as she did with whom she could share new experiences with. No longer would his young face brighten her concrete world of gunfire and screams. From this day forth he would become a face in her past who she could never find in her future. A person in her memories would grow dimmer as time the time passed. He'd just be a thought that would fade from being with an agonizing slowness or a hole in her life that could never be filled. All because some commissar decided he was running the wrong way.

At very least, she still had Afennor. He'd gone to bed early after returning from the illegal funeral, so titled because the arbites criminalized funerals for "traitors" like Rucknor. Deep within the bombed-out maze of rocky debris, twisted pipe, and ashen heaps, lay a single cot, where the brotherless Afennor now slept.

Tears of joy in her eyes, Asseah crouched on the floor by him as he lay in his bed to bring her head level with his. With one hand she softly stroked his silky hair and her other hand patted his left shoulder. The sensation of touching him after burying her other son brought an unbelievable feeling of attachment. It was having a weight lifted off her shoulders, like being allowed to breath after long suffocation, like being given a second chance at life. She just couldn't think about anything else except how deeply she loved Afennor.

Above her own occasional sniffles she could hear Afennor breathing. It was signs of life like this that promised Asseah that her last beloved son was with her and not a lifeless corpse, like…Rucknor, as Afennor could appear to be when lying still on his bed. His breathing, the rhythmic rise and fall of his belly with each breath, his heartbeat, the warmth of his skin, all of it let Asseah know that he was alive.

Unlike his baby brother.

…

Afennor sat in the thunderhawk, huddled in the corner, staring at his bare left hand in the soft neon glow of the nearby scanner. He clutched the knuckle of his middle finger, where once a band of steel had been coiled. It had been a gift from his mother, Asseah.

The tau had taken it.

In his heart, Afennor wanted to accept the Black Tomb's half-offer. He wanted to puff out his chest and accept the task, to bellow out that he, Afennor Zodan, was ready to become an Ultramarine. Unfortunately, his head warned him of an invulnerable barrier between himself and his acceptance of the offer.

They were likely not going to escape.

Supplies were running out, the enemy closed in, the thunderhawk was a wreck, and hungry guns went unfed. He thought about his brother and wondered if maybe, just maybe, there was an afterlife.

"Is there something the matter?" whispered a scout through the night's darkness. About him, the other scouts sat in cross-legged meditation. Flanking him, the loud, snoring forms of Rarend's henchmen sat in human piles of splayed clothing.

"No," Afennor stood up and made for the doorway, not wanting to be caught looking at his hand by these strangers. He wanted to be alone when he prayed.

Afennor slithered into the tube, whatever it was called, where the chamber for the thunderhawk's cannon ate its shells from. His nimble body fit nicely into the cranny where normally went the bullet-shaped containers of untapped hell, ready to erupt in fire and violence upon the wretched heads of the Emperor's foes.

"Dead, um…" what did Afennor need to say as he lay inside a metal tube, waiting to die? "Emperor? If you can hear me, my name is Afennor I'm a conscript and the Black Tomb thinks I'm a good shot." There. That was all he was. "I fought all my life in your name and I only ask that when I die…it doesn't hurt." His mind filled with thoughts of death. He'd always imagined he'd be the only kid in his regiment to grow old. Now reality set in. "Emperor, can I please die quickly…"

[i]"Yehn Ay Yad,"[/i]

Afennor heard, or rather, felt the voice. It was like remembering a noise that had just gone mute, the memory of three alien syllables that his mouth could say but his brain did not understand. The top of his head tingled and instinct caused Afennor to bend his head up.

He found himself glaring into a masked face pressed close enough his to lick if he so chose to. The mask glowed softly and was featureless and black: the perfect replica of a human face of neutral calm. It rested upon the face of a black hooded and cloaked man who lay on his front inside the narrow confines of the tube so to stare at Afennor. Though the cloak and mask no doubt held a body, Afennor's eyes could not pierce the glow of the mask and could see nothing but void looking back at him from the eyeholes.

"AH!" Afennor hurt himself as he slid himself from the tube and threw himself down the hall, tripping, stumbling, sprinting like he had never ran before. He leapt into the chamber where the scouts lay and stopped only when the scouts had subdued him.

"What happened?" one demanded, shotgun trained on the door he'd come in through.

"A…g….ghost," Afennor's heart still beat like it was ready to break from his chest. Being startled so horribly was a terror that rose its head higher than the terrors that even the largest, maddest ork could induce.

"Necron?" asked a scout.

"I don't know," Afennor shuddered. The scouts looked doubtfully upon one another, silently asking their fellows for an opinion. Each confounded stare wrought him deeper into confusion. From what he knew of these machine warriors, what he'd beheld was something entirely different.

The question haunted him long into the night. The thunderhawk was searched carefully, but not a trace of the being was found. Not even the Black Tomb, with his infinite experience, could identity what Afennor saw when he described it.

Whatever it had been, his odds of seeing it again fell. From the sky, as beautiful as a charge of angels, as loud as a storm, as sleek as lightning, came a transport ship of the Sifish PDF, accompanied by two valkyries.

"Black Tomb?" Afennor asked as the scouts solemnly trudged aboard their rescuer's ships while the henchmen laughed in thanks to the crews, "I was thinking about what you said…"

"The Astartes need as many new recruits as we can have in these dark days," replied the Black Tomb. "If you believe you have what it takes."

If only his little brother could have heard those words with him.


	14. The Garden of Slaanesh

Chaedrosarr was a civilized world of relative peace. It was a source of pride amongst the happy inhabitants that there were no mutants amidst them. Their cities were bright and beautiful, not unlike the inhabitants. Across the war-torn swamp of the galaxy, Chaedrosarr was a single flowering tree of calm and quiet.

It was therefore inhumanly cruel that Fulgrim set his eyes upon the world when Abaddon put out an ultimatum to his followers for each legion to drag one world for each chaos legion into the warp.

The sun was eclipsed the world's lonely moon. The eclipse lasted a whole day, then two, all the way to six. When the world got its sun back, the inhabitants found the sky not to be sea blue, but sickly and pink, like a swollen wound. Little did they know that their paradise world had been sucked into the warp. The landscape changed then, covered by an impenetrable pink fog. When it was gone, glittering cities became plains of marble. Alpine forests, tropical jungles, and temperate coniferous woodlands were reduced to sterile desert, ringed with writhing pink tentacles. Mountains were warped into odd, wondrous shapes that defied gravity. The seas dried up, their water blinking away. Animals went insane and slaughtered one another.

Most obvious was the interesting change inflicted on the population itself. The majority of the three billion-strong population of Chaedrosarr felt their flesh twisted and morphed, their bodies reshaped like clay, growing bigger or smaller. When the fog cleared, every human on the world had been transformed back into their younger selves. Ancient men on their death beds suddenly found themselves not in the spent bodies of a man who'd lived, but in the supple forms they'd once had after living the first year of their second decade. Fresh babes and young children who hadn't even met their teenage years found similar fates, growing older, not younger, into strong youths and beautiful maidens. Those already in those years looked in puzzlement, even in laughter, at their compatriots.

Before the population could come to terms with the comical change, the forces of Slaneesh invaded. Daemonettes washed over the land, routing all resistance, turning their weapons and tanks into functionless, but perfect, replicas of crystal. The giggling fiends rounded up the people of Chaedrosarr and imprisoned them in the sprawling dungeons beneath huge six-spired palaces that rose from the naked ground in the Prince of Pleasure's honor. From there, the sixty-thousand most desirable sons and daughters of Chaedrosarr were sent to the Emperor's Children, who had just landed on the planet, each warband summoned by Fulgrim. Each corrupted Astartes received six of this group, to be turned into their personal slaves.

Those who escaped this fate faced an eternity of damnation at the hands of the whims of Slaanesh and a host of Slaaneshi daemons. Deep pits sank into the surface of the planet, and to these abysses were consigned millions of naked prisoners, to face sensuous torture from the daemonettes, never aging, never starving, never dying. Others were sent to daemon princes where their souls would be dragged before them to be caressed by the claws of unhuman monstrosities. Millions more were warped and tortured to become one with the beautiful daemon world. Clouds became fleshy pink as shrieking faces appeared on them. Human bodies were worked into the cliffs of the world. The soil across some plains became the stretched, smooth skin of living prisoners. Rivers became boiling tears, the blow of the wind turned to the cries of human victims.

For all the pleasing horrors the world endured, it would only be a prelude to what was to come. When the gates of the warp were opened, one million Chaedrosarrs and their mortal inhabitants would be laid bare to Slannesh and his every sickly whim. From there, the decadence would last for all time.

Fulgrim contemplated all of this as he sat in the clearing inside the daemonic forest. Each handsome tree had visibly once been a person. They even retained the hair, heads, and faces of the people they used to be. Skin was their bark, long human arms reaching up in mute pain towards the sky replaced the branches, of which each tree had only two. The trees had no feet, their legs having been fused together by Slanneshi will. They stood tall, four or five meters high. Their faces were frozen, paralyzed, into an expression of screaming terror of one who knew they were being transformed into something unnatural. Tiny daemonic parodies of woodland animals skittered through these fleshy trees. How Fulgrim enjoyed this world!

"Ah, my brother primarchs can take their time," sighed the primarch lazily as he sat back against a formless lump of marble and stared at the pink sky. Somewhere behind those clouds, the galaxy heaved in agonized war while tyranids and necrons slaughtered one another by the billion, dragging world after world into extinction. Let them fight, let them die. They did not know the pleasure of Slaanesh.

The previous day, Fulgrim had heard word that Magnus had conquered his world: Krieg of all places. Since Fulgrim, the Alpha Legion, and Lorgar had their worlds, only five remained. Then they would have their armada to strike Holy Terra. Until then, Fulgrim had the world to enjoy.

"Faster!" he laughed to the dancing daemonette before him, twirling a stick, mounted at its opposite points by two bland masks. This lithe creature, whose name to some mortals was "The Masque" could not stop dancing since the day Slaanesh cursed her.

"I am born!" laughed The Masque as she spun one of the masks to her face while her nimble hooves too her into the air. As Fulgrim watched, the mask morphed into a sharply handsome face of indeterminable gender. She flipped the mask from her face and spun the opposite end of the stick to her face, so to cover it with her other mask.

"Ahhhh!" she screamed in mock pain while falling to the floor in a mess, her mask taking on the likeness of an eldar. With a dainty cartwheel, she jumped to her feet and deliver a bow, which was the first step in the first step of her next dance. Fulgrim enjoyed his private show and clapped his many hands.

"When we have dragged the Emperor from his palace, you shall have a new, grand story to tell!" he laughed with his poisoned honey voice while a moaning wind tossed his white hair. Before The Masque could answer, a whirling, three-edged knife sang through the air. Fulgrim ducked, narrowly dodging it, while The Masque nimbly danced aside, without missing a step. The star thrust itself into the trunk of a tree. Blood spurted from the crack it rended.

Lashing out of the forest, from a nimbus of gold that tore even the timeless air of the daemon world, came a tall eldar huntress, at the head of a fifty-strong charge of other huntresses, armed with swords and pistols. Howling Banshees.

"Death to Fulgrim!" the masked huntress shouted, a mane of hair billowing around her silvery armored body. The cries of banshees lit the silence.

Fulgrim recognized the leader as the Phoenix Lord Jain Zar herself, yet how she had found him here was beyond him. Nevertheless, as great as he enjoyed the luxury of dance, war was another item from which he drew pleasure. Fulgrim drew back while Slaanesh sent him reinforcements.

Bursting from the tree trunks, running out of them as smoothly as through water, came a host of sixty-six daemonettes. Fulgrim retreated into the forest from the clearing, but the banshees and their lord leapt through the daemon forest, coming closer as they avoided the charging daemonettes, whose lashing claws and daggers could match the eldar weaponry.

As he plunged deeper into the forest, Fulgrim saw the nimbus of gold disappear. Whatever it had been it could plague him no longer with the torments that the eldar could send to ruin his pleasure.

'Surely a trick of the Black Library,' he thought in dismay as the daemonettes finally caught up with the Howling Banshees, The Masque at their head. Fulgrim calmed down and witnessed the onslaught.

Leaping, bounding daemonettes fought with equally graceful banshees, who jumped and bounded off tree trunks and into the branches of the fleshy trees, taking the trees by the hands and using them to swing towards Fulgrim. Shuriken clattered off his unholy hide as they sought to end his life from range, but Slaanesh protected him.

The fight became less of a clash and more of a choreographed dance of leaping blades. Fighters who missed a step found their bodies ripped apart by the other side. Around the trunks of trees they fought and amongst the branches, leaping, shooting, dodging between them. It was beautiful.

A banshee leapt over a pair of daemonettes and used their heads as a springboard to jump higher up. She gripped a fleshy branch and swung herself towards Fulgrim, sword ready, body twirling in midair. Fulgrim watched as a daemonette came up behind her, claw raised. The banshee ended on the ground, held erect by one arm, which held her sword, driven point-first into the forest floor. The other hand held her pistol, and she fired it with total accuracy, upside-down. The charging daemonette sizzled.

As deadly as the energetic battle was, there was not a single fighter greater than The Masque. She cart wheeled over banshees, grabbing their heads, and ripping them off, only to drive her bladed hand into an eldar spiritstone when she landed. When a banshee fired her pistol at The Masque, she hit her companion and sent the eldar's soul into Slaanesh's maw: The Masque had already bounded away, leaving a wake of dead eldar behind her.

Jain Zar killed as intensely, where she went, the daemons burned. Her stave cut them down, her blade, which she had recovered, was thrown through the air, where it cut down beautiful creatures of Chaos before returning to its mistress. By the climax of the dancing fight, only she and The Masque remained. Jain Zar and The Masque landed in front of Fulgrim. Jain Zar looked into Fulgrim's eyes with an intense glare of ancient hate, while The Masque gave a bow.

"Monster," Jain Zar said as Fulgrim began to clap.

"Indeed that was a performance fit for a monster like me. Now, would you care to become a part of this forest?" Fulgrim asked, stroking the trunk of the nearest tree while a warp-tainted wind carried the screams of victims through the air and ruffled the forest's hair.

"Die!" Jain Zar yelled, jumping at Fulgrim, throwing her blade at him and stabbing with her stave. Fulgrim caught the knife and Jain Zar's stave, then heaved her in amongst the trees.

"Beautiful, indeed you are. But the show is over," sighed Fulgrim as a fresh wave of daemonettes emerged from the trees, now 666 in number, their blades and claws gleaming under the infernal sky. "Kill her," Fulgrim commanded to The Masque.

Jain Zar was an ancient warrior of honed skill. Not even she could stop the wave that descended on her in a thunderstorm of leaping and darting forms. Still she fought back, still she broke daemons apart, still she jumped amidst the hurricane of attackers. She leapt around trees, jumped into their branches and back down again. But the servants of Slaanesh came on and Jain Zar missed a step. Her long life ended upon being ripped apart, The Masque chopping off her arms and legs personally.

[i]The Storm of Silence struck down by the Storm of Silence[/i]

As Fulgrim looked around the forest, he came to realize that no piece of it bled. No tree had suffered any damage in the intensity he'd witnessed. As the daemonettes retreated, leaving Fulgrim alone with the skipping, hopping cursed one, he allowed himself some measure of amazement at what he saw.

"That perfect?" he asked, stroking the skin of an unhurt trunk.

…

Indeed, the dance had been that precise. Tzeench turned away from his brother god's world before Slaanesh spotted his spying. Things were going well. With two phoenix lords dead, they only had four more left to endure. Tzeench yawned with exhaustion and slipped back in his throne to take a nap.

Why was he so sleepy? And why were his seers still unable to fix the future? He looked at the future suspended in from the ceiling where he could keep an eye on it. It was as foggy as ever.

'The solution will be made clear,' Tzeench thought as he toyed with a ball of fate, tossing it from claw to claw. He faltered and dropped it, sending the ball of fate to the floor where It shattered. Tzeench knew the mistake was due to his fatigue. He needed to sleep it off.

And Tzeench, the architect of fate, closed his eyes and slept.

…

The skies of the crone world crackled with lightning. Beneath the rainless clouds, Rarend stood between two autarchs of the eldar, their moody black armor traced with strange alien runes that Rarend could only barely translate with his decades of experience. His robe was curled tightly around him, but even that did little to stave off the cold that gripped the sterile air. The mood of this desolate place passed on to the eldar there as well. All faces were helmeted and masked, all stood with a slouch, all were death-quiet. Where there were once six there now stood four.

"A prayer for Altansar for the lost lord of death and one to Jain Zar for her loss," Asurmen, the crested Phoenix Lord, solemnly spoke while the others around him bowed their heads. "Martyrs, both." Rarend noticed Asurmen did not bend his head, but seemed the most grief-stricken of all. As far as Rarend understood, Asurmen was the first of the Phoenix Lords and appeared to hold sway over them here.

"What now, my lord?" asked Fuegan, "we are assembled once more. Now the farseers weave the threads of fate in preparation for our next move. The harlequins are ready to send us to our next destination. Where?" The harlequins, the keepers of the Black Library. It was they who wove the magic needed to send them through time and out of the sight of chaos to where they needed to go.

"As it is," Asurmen said to the small group, "now the act reaches the point where death must be made ready to die. We unleashed the servants of the C'tan, now we must be prepared to strike them down when they are finished with the tyranids."

"What of reports of the chaos primarchs creating new daemon worlds?" asked the scorpion-headed one. Karandras, or something, Rarend did not stoop too deeply to relate to these monstrous aliens. As tremendous as their sacrifice to destroy the Nightbringer had been, they had still awoken the necrons with their meddling. Rarend understood that the eldar only wanted to use them like tools to burn away the hive fleets of the enslavers….tyranids, but like an arrogant inventor, they wielded their power over fate carelessly. How could such a pitiful race slay the necrons?

"The chaos legions cannot be stopped by us," Asurmen replied. "Our priorities lie with the destruction with a foe far older than even the Great Enemy. As it is, the humans of chaos who hold the Talisman of Vaul make pilgrimages from world to world, leaving nothing but torn reality in their wake. It is only by blind serendipity that they have not been mangled by our foes. IF we are to slay the other C'tan, we need that Talisman of Vaul."

"Which of our fleets can contest it?" asked Fuegan.

"We shall not assault the device. Doing so will bring losses upon us. We need trickery on our side," explained Asurmen. "We must gather our forces together for…for what will come." There was a glint of knowing in Asurmen's voice. Rarend wondered if the great lord of the eldar knew exactly what the next years would bring. But if he did, then why did he not tell others? Damn the eldar!

"Taking the Talisman of Vaul shall fall to Ulthwe. Only they can weave plots thick enough to avoid a confrontation with the warriors of chaos who hold it. The human Rarend will go with them," Asurmen explained. "He must see the weapon for himself, so that he will understand what it is we will ask of him." Suddenly Rarend understood why he had been brought here. Asurmen was tempting him to butt into their meeting, to demand what the eldar wanted him to do! It was working, Rarend now struggled to stay still.

'Why didn't they just tell me what they wanted?' Rarend thought. The answer came from elsewhere in his brain. 'Because I would not listen if they told me.' Unable to suppress his curiosity anymore, Rarend worked his way into the eldar plans and moved accordingly.

"What do you want me to do?" asked Rarend, "why was I captured, brought to Altansar, brought here, and acquainted with the Phoenix Lords?" The answer was forthwith, for Asurmen had expected the question.

"Because we need you to help us destroy the C'tan," replied Asurmen. "There are three now in the galaxy. The Deceiver, the Outsider, and the Void Dragon. Of those three, the Void Dragon has the most prevalence to you, for he lies within Imperial space, out of our reach."

"Where?"

"You would call me a liar if I told you."

"WHERE!"

"Mars."

"Liar!"

"You see? You would not help us slay a creature on Mars unless you saw for yourself our battle against death. The C'tan will strip the Imperium of life if not stopped, leaving Chaos unopposed to take Holy Terra and turn the universe into a playground for chaos. This is as much your war as it is ours, our enemies the same. You are not ready to help us yet, but the time will come when you will have to choose between eternal damnation or victory over death."

"I do not aid the alien," Rarend spat arrogantly.

"You will. When the Blackstone Fortress is ours and only one C'tan remains, you will aid us," Asurmen said. "The necrons are, but puppets. Slay the puppet masters, and death halts in its tracks." Rarend was still dissatisfied, though deep in his heart, he feared the eldar's plan made sense.

"I am an inquisitor of the Imperium. You may be my foremost enemy, but Chaos casts the darkest shadow. I did overhear your mention daemon worlds and…chaos primarchs?" Rarend asked. The other Phoenix Lords laughed while Asurmen shook his head.

"All you need to know is that right now, while necron and tyranid kill one another, the chaos lords amass an armada of planetary proportions to assault Holy Terra with. When the rift near Terra opens, and the C'tan still live, you will be naked to the onslaught of nine daemon worlds and wish you had helped us kill Void Dragon."

Damn the eldar!

…

Abaddon stood on the bridge of his ship and stared at the runes on the control panel as they listed the battles the tyranids and necrons had, as well as the cost to the Imperium.

[i]+The Sabbat Worlds now lifeless, their final settlements destroyed by necrons+ [/i]

[i]+ Keldes ravaged by tyranids. 4 billion dead+[/i]

[i]+ Necron and tyranid fleets continue to battle in Ring of Fire. Tyranid presence decreased by 16%+[/i]

[i]+ by the eyes of our Tzeench-blessed seers, we see necron advances through Ultima Segmentum. Tyranid ships lost estimated in the hundred billion+[/i]

One report confused him.

[i]+ Hive ravages necron catacomb+[/i]

Never before had he heard of such happenings. The tyranids simply did not attack necron worlds, yet here they were, doing just that. This was the fingerprint of a greater intelligence in the Hive Mind. Either it had learned to strike at the necrons in their fleshless homes or another mind helped direct them, one that did not live to feed.

"Number eleven, the second of the Emperor's lost sons," Abaddon muttered. Apollyon: one of the only things Abaddon envied. "May he keep the Imperium occupied long enough." The screen flickered and a new report was added.

[i]+ Necromunda falls to Perturabo. Astartes retreat+[/i] The Iron Warriors had their world.

Abaddon looked away from his screen and out the window. Orbiting there, around the red sphere of the tainted Cadian sun, were the planet-hells of Krieg, Cadia, Chaedrosarr, and Dis, which had been taken the Word Bearers. Soon to be added to their ranks was the world of Necromunda and Ashmotaria, the latter of which had fallen to the Night Lords. The cowards had actually plucked a cultist-filled world from real space, rather than conquering a loyalist one. Abaddon would have a talk with them about meeting his standards.

Only Angron and Mortarion needed worlds to claim. Abaddon himself already knew which one he would take, and how, so he waited on only two.

Nine worlds of Hell, nine tiers to his assault. And with the Imperium defending itself from the tyranids and necrons, they wouldn't even notice the missing planets.


	15. The Other C'tan

Ulthwe exploded out of the rift in space and time and into real space over the warp-ridden remnants of a world destroyed by the Grey Knights. From his apartment aboard the craftworld, Rarend could see the world now a barren rock, was warped into a nebulous shape and burning. It was fresh work. They were on the trail of the Blackstone Fortress.

The voyage through the stars was dull for Rarend, who spend dayless night after dayless night lounging in his apartment, distracted only by the occasional visits of his keeper, who was different from the other one only in appearance. His appeasing attitude, tight-mouth, and even voice reminded Rarend the keeper on the other craftworld, which he now knew had been Altansar, the world of Maugan Ra.

His time here was helped weakly when he was presented a tome from Ulthwe's archives: an outdated compendium of Inquisitorial records involving eldar, stolen from Emperor knows where? Rarend read over the notes in it to refresh himself, the words of Inquisitor Czevak mumbling in his head.

"Ask not the eldar…ask not the eldar…ask not the eldar…" Rarend grew bored of it after its fifteenth reading.

It was therefore a welcome change of pace when the mood on the craftworld changed. Rarend's apartment was a tall spite that hoisted him high up into the sky: granting him a perfect view of the planet they were coming towards. Outside, he heard calm but strong eldar voices whispering frightful rumors to one another. The talisman was sighted. From a window and with a set of crystalline glasses, Rarend witnessed the chaos unfold…

…

Skander Moorus looked through the main window of the Nero at the oncoming eldar ship, if that small word was large enough to properly title the moon of ivory and lights that bore in on his ship. Such a colossus of the void could easily cripple a fleet ten times of what Skander had, even with half the guns he estimated the craftworld carried. He looked down at the control screen, where redish runes indicated his five escort ships, support frigate, and the Nero itself, plus the Blackstone Fortress.

"Lock onto the craftworld with the warp-cannon and fire, full power! Glory to chaos!" commanded the captain behind him. Skander turned about, his ancient face frowning and his jaws revealing pointed teeth with every word.

"In the name of the chaos gods, do not!" Skander barked, "the eldar would not so deliberately endanger their great craftworlds without cause…"

"Nonsense, fire the cannon!" The ratings at their controls, whose fingers had melted and fused with their buttons, whose heads were skulls that lolled stupidly to the side, whose bodies were etched with unholy runes, did nothing. In the empty sockets of one skull, Skander saw two pinpricks of green light, begging him to make up his mind.

"The eldar would never do this, fools yes, but even the fool has his limits," Skander continued, as the captain strode over to his controls. "Just as Tzeench bluffs in the Great Game, so too can eldar make their own bluffs. Do you not think that if the eldar were coming that they would not have sent ships…"

"Enough of your whining," the other Grey Knight laughed as he lunged down and pressed a button upon the controls. "Fire the Blackstone Fortress at the craftworld! HAHAHAHA!" Skander had no choice but to look outside and behold the logic of the eldar's bluff. "Now we shall see what you were so afraid of, Moorus!" the captain cackled through his leering helm.

As the beam of energy lanced into the delicate craftworld, Skander's eyes were dazzled by an explosion of flashing white shards, delicate as paper but as razor-sharp as a bladed diamond. The whole craftworld shattered like crystal bursting apart in brilliant hurricanes of gleaming shards. But unlike natural debris, this glittering refuse vanished after the whole of the craftworld had been reduced to pieces.

"And there is your answer. The eldar made a mistake coming here," laughed the captain. Skander was quiet, but in anger.

"They're coming," he whispered as he watched the stars for the first gliding eldar ships to burst into view.

"My lord," whispered a dusty voice from the teeth of the nearest rating's skull, "radar detects incoming enemy ships, including a craftworld, from our port side."

"Damnation," Skander turned to the laughing Grey Knight, "you see brother? It was a damnable illusion. We destroyed magic…" the Nero trembled. "And the Blackstone Fortress will take some time to cool down.

"We must retreat!" cried he captain.

"Because of you, fool," snorted Skander as he watched as the glittering shapes of the real eldar ships approach. Behind them, no bigger than a moon and out of range of the warp cannon, was a craftworld. Skander judged it was retreating. Of course, they needed the real craftworld nearby for their witches to generate so convincing an illusion.

"Prepare to enter the warp!" shouted Skander as the ratings began pressing buttons.

"Moorus," asked the captain, "why in the name of the warp did they not simply forego the grand illusion and assault us with the death of this world below us? There is not but Imperial farmsteads on this planet where our shadows darken."

"Perhaps they wanted to protect it, or perhaps their ruse is more than it seems," Skander replied. "Pray for the first." As the eldar ships approached, the Nero, its escort fleet, and the Blackstone Fortress flew forward, preparing to enter the warp. Eldar torpedoes were spat at them and Skander watched as the runes on the control panel indicated the spectacular destruction of an escort ship. It mattered little as the warp blossomed to life before him.

In they went.

…

"So you see now how serious we are, human?" asked the farseer as she removed her helmet to show him a young face beneath short but splendid ink-black hair. Rarend nodded, false assurance behind his action.

"Yes, the traitors were seen off," Rarend replied. He actually hadn't witnessed more than a distant burst of light as the Grey Knights retreated. "I see now that the eldar are an enemy of chaos. Whatever you want, I shall do." Perhaps if he kept up a convincing ruse, the eldar would let him leave.

"My people command something very simple of you," continued the farseer as she planted the tip of her bony staff into the ground. "You must go to Mars and follow our instructions. They and they alone will guarantee the death of the Void Dragon and leave the necrons open to the coup de grace."

"I will do whatever you ask," Rarend lied. The farseer squinted at him and Rarend felt the inside of his head stung, as if from an insect's stinger.

"Unfortunately, you do not seem to think so. Perhaps you will think otherwise when you've watched the last part of our procedure," with a nod to her two bodyguards, the pair of eldar descended on Rarend and stood him up. "You will accompany the fleet to Yamatoka, where the Grey Knights have fled, thanks to the manipulations of our farseers. It is the last Tau world, under siege by the tyranids. The Deciever himself resides there, defending the tau."

"I am not your puppet!" Rarend shouted as he was pulled from the chamber.

"You will learn your place," replied the farseer coldly. As the door closed, Rarend wondered. Did she really know that?

Damn the eldar!

…

The tau world below was beautiful, a harmonious clash of sea blue and tree green.

"I swear to you, farseer," said the warlock through his mind to the distant farseer of Ulthwe, aboard her ship, where the human Rarend sat, "I promise we will fail." The warlock's small fleet swept down to the planet below.

…

The Shas'o looked down at the ascending tyranids. Blue flashes from tau guns tore the alien beasts from the cliff and hurled their ravaged bodies down into the misty treetops below, but there were always more. The Shas'o could look at a handful of climbing tyranids and watch them all die, but there were always more. The Shas'o looked at his warriors blasting down the cliff at the rising tide of alien warriors, then up at the glimmering towers of the city behind him. From every summit of every building came blue, flashing shots from tau guns, slashing at the overcast sky. In reply, felled tyranids dropped from their celestial perches, a trail of smoke showing their route to the ground below.

The Shas'o knew more about the battle than any tau here as it loomed over the heads of its fellow warriors, whose blades wrists were held in reserve in favor of a more effective killing method against these razored fiends. Pirates who loved the intimate thrill of cutting up flesh shot tyranids dead from afar. If they only knew…

The Shas'o looked to the horizon, his instincts knowing what was coming. He could hear the voices of his true servants in his head, though to anyone watching him, he was doing nothing but staring at the horizon inside his suit. In actual fact, he was giving orders.

'Await,' the Shas'o told its true followers.

"Shas'o, we must retreat!" one overlord shouted as his suit flew up to the Shas'o. In each of its two white hands, this overlord's suit carried a pair of tonfa, whose blunt ends has crushed the brains of the largest of tyranid ground beasts. As the overlord spoke, it raised a hand and launched a cluster of streaming rockets into the forest below, sending fire and dead alien into the air.

"Then we shall," replied the Shas'o. "Take your crew back to the city and fortify from there."

"We're to wait for them to come?"

"I trust we will have time," the Shas'o said as he felt the first of his true servants rise out of the ground in the forest below, "why, the gods must defend us." If the Shas'o could see the overlord's face, he would see confusion.

"There are no gods, even the foolish ethereals know…"

"Do as I say," insisted the Shas'o. With a shake of his hand he sent the tau away from the edge of the cliff. His other warriors followed, confused as to why they were withdrawing. Below, the Shas'o could see the tyranid tide end. No more came from the forest. The necrons were attacking.

As the first tyranids reached the lip of the cliff, the whole world was suddenly shaken as if the world was coming apart. A billowing wave of dust swept across the world, throwing everything in darkness. The shockwave obliterated the oncoming tyranid beasts, crushing them into the cliff and sending them tumbling down to the trees below. The invisible battle below the trees, between tyranid swarm and necron, was stalled by the thunder.

'They've come,' thought the Shas'o as he levitated off the cliff and over the trees. 'They're here.' The Shas'o was, in truth, the C'tan named by mortals as "the Deciever." It did not enjoy pretending to be a tau, but it needed to do so if it was to spare this species the wrath of the hive. Though they were troublesome, the Deciever liked how little the tau invested into psyker technology. It wished that they, and not the humans, ruled the stars. The Deciever already knew what caused the shockwave even before it saw the wreckage of the Nero, even before the crash happened. Now, the Deciever would learn if what it suspected was true…

…

Skander shook his head as he rose from the ruin. They had emerged from the warp only a kilometer above the atmosphere of this world. Something had blown them off course, twisting them, turning them, guiding the Nero through the warp. All around him, the debris of the crash. Dead ratings lay sprawled across the floor, while the captain was thrown against the far wall, his superhuman body keeping him alive.

"By the dark gods…" rasped the other marine as he rose up.

"The eldar were clever indeed," groaned Skander, as pained to admit the fact, as he was to stand back up. He felt like something had skewered his back, and a few bones were broken. But the ancient giant rose again, thankful the ship was upright, brushing away dust from his armor. "The damned eldar will pay, chaos willing…"

"By the dark gods," whispered the other marine, raising his force weapon, which had survived the crash, "you eldar witch. How dare you." Skander looked over his shoulder at the empty bridge behind him. He saw nothing but ruin, but the other man was speaking to someone present. He turned around in time to see the man lunge for him, stave raised, its crackling blade ready to chop his life in twain. "Die eldar!" yelled the bezerk man as he fell on Skander, force weapon ready to kill. Skander seized the traitor by the elbow and snapped it back, sending him to the floor. Skander lifted the fallen force weapon and rose it against the captain's breast.

"What has maddened you?" Skander asked.

"You…eldar…" the captain tried to move, but Skander stabbed him to death, not wishing to confront the wrath of another Grey Knight. The man died thinking he faced an eldar.

Out in the halls, Skander heard bolterfire. He raced outside the bridge in time to see the surviving crewmen and their Grey Knight overseers slaughtering one another in the control room. Skander watched as three Grey Knights clove through a wall of struggling servitors with their force weapon. All around, men yelled the names of their enemies.

"There! An Imperial!"

"Kill the eldar!"

"How did he get in here? Kill him!" Skander witnessed the last survivors of the battle, two Grey Knights, run one another through with their swords. Skander grimaced as he realized he was alone.

"Help," Skander ran over to the nearest control and heaved the slaughtered body of its rating off it. "Help!" he shouted into the vox. On the screen, his words appeared in yellow runes. "Aid us," he called. "Aid us," the screen said. He hoped the rest of the fleet could hear him. "We need support, our crewmen have killed each other," how else could he word it?

Behind him, a cold, cackle froze his black heart. He turned around to confront what appeared to be a tau battesuit, covered in blades, in the middle of the room. Yet the voice, so cold, so loud; nothing a confined pilot of the tau race could produce.

"So, it is true. You have found one of the lost fortresses," the otherworldly voice said. "Those signals, I could taste them as you sent them, I could see where they've been sent. To your escort ships in the atmosphere alongside...it."

"Who are you?" Skander coughed and fell to the ground. Behind him, a single surviving rating, lowered his smoking bolter.

And so the Deciever rose up to greet its foes, the Grey Knights, in orbit with their small fleet above the world. It sent its ships to dispose of the foe guarding the fortress. From the sunless face of the planet, the crescent tombships of the necrons came. Through their eyes, the C'tan witnessed Grey Knight ships being sundered apart by gauss weapons. The fortress itself held firm, gauss shots flying off it, like jets of water shot into a rock wall. Only the C'tan itself could destroy this, the most formidable of the Blackstone Fortresses it had yet seen. A tombship was reduced to wreck by the fortress: one of nine the Deciever sent.

And as Grey Knight and necron ships exchanged fire through the sky, the C'tan's warriors alerted it to a new threat. Hovering above the planet like a moon, the Deciever was alerted of a small wing of eldar ships approaching the battle.

The Deceiver weaved the most complex of plans in a heartbeat. Utilizing its resources, it sent what ships it could to the tiny eldar fleet. The Deciever knew now that the last thing the eldar would realize as the Blackstone Fortress came apart, was that they had been tricked. But by then, the necron assault would already be upon them.

…

Rarend watched the battle from the bridge of the eldar cruiser. The Grey Knights were reduced to a single flaming ship and the unscathed Blackstone Fortress. He flinched as another necron ship came apart under the fortress' defensive batteries. Four remained.

"Why are the necrons not attacking us?" Rarend asked the farseer beside him. There were only one ship, but a grand vessel at that. He knew that twenty eldar ships awaited elsewhere: the rest of the fleet from Ulthwe. Where were they?

"The necrons have their priorities elsewhere," replied the farseer as the gleaming forms of eldar ships appeared on the horizon: the rest of the fleet.

"My farseer! Our sisters are here!"

"Orders?"

"Carry out the plan," replied the farseer. The whole ship shook as a single blast was shot at the eldar fleet.

'Friendly fire?' Rarend thought, 'the eldar killing their own?'

Rarend did not recognize the shot: for what could be made of a ball of multi-coloured light? His experience on eldar weaponry was baffled. Then the ball burst into a cloud, bright and colourful, filled with crackling energy. What was once a small ball became a whole storm of colour that covered the approaching fleet. But the energy he beheld crackling light lightning amidst the clouds, it was the same burning shade as the warp cannon's shot. Only when the glassy chunks of the illusionary Ulthwe drifted out of the cloud did Rarend understand.

"That illusion of Ulthwe, it was more than an illusion," Rarend sputtered.

"Yes. It was an entity made of pure warp energy. Not quite wraithbone, but not quite eldritch magic either. It took a generation to create, so you can understand my pain when I saw it come apart," said the farseer. "But it did something for us. It stored the power from the warp cannon's blast. It carries with destructive energy of the Blackstone Fortress in its very atoms, like untapped energy hiding inside a battery. We have brought it back into being, smothering or enemy with its power." The farseer turned her face to Rarend. "Those ships, they weren't supposed to be there. I told the captain of the fleet that he could not join us, that he would fail."

"He was supposed to fail?"

"How else would we know who the Deciever was impersonating? It as cost us twenty ships, may Isha remember them for their sacrifice."

"What?" Rarend asked, "I thought you just attacked your own people?"

"No. The fleet, the whole fleet, was the Deciever in disguise, its form changed to the likeness of an entire eldar fleet, the real one was likely destroyed. The Deciever could not dream of us sacrificing such a large portion of our forces, but we know it would try and fool us." As the last necron ship came apart, leaving the Blackstone Fortress alone with the eldar and the cloud of shards, the farseer allowed herself a slender grin. "Now, shall we collect it?" Rarned blinked as the cloud and the shard dispersed to reveal a gold-skinned figure, still, and curled up in pain, saturated with an energy that was lethal to it.

"By the Emperor…" whispered Rarend, scanning the Deciever through a special eldar telescope. He could see the C'tan's tired face, the light reflecting off its skin, everything. "I know this monster. It…it is a C'tan! But never have I seen it anywhere but the pages of my textbooks!"

"Now you understand us?" asked the farseer as the Blackstone Fortress fired its warp cannon. The Deciever disintegrated. "The rest of the fleet comes." Behind them, more eldar ships appeared to take the Blackstone Fortress before more necrons could arrive. The battle was far from over. It would take nothing less than the intervention of the whole Ulthwe fleet to take the fortress.

Rarend spend the rest of the battle inside his quarters, getting over what he had seen. A C'tan, caught up in a single small error, and destroyed by it!

He was too stunned at what he had seen even when the eldar won the battle and destroyed the last remnants of the Grey Knights in the fortress. He was too stunned to speak when they entered the warp, retreating from a fleet of one hundred necron ships from other, distant worlds. He closed his eyes, refusing to look at the farseer of this ship as they returned to Ulthwe.

"You will go to Holy Terra, with one companion and our instructions. Only then will the third C'tan die," she said. "Else…"

"I know what will happen if I don't," Rarend said darkly. He looked up at the farseer. "Now I know what will happen if I do. Void Dragon…will die." He shrugged. "One companion?"

"A special prisoner we took from the enemy. Skander Moorus of the Grey Knights. You will know more later," the farseer said. "Now, you must rest." Rarend sat back bewildered as his ship, the ships they were with, and the freshly-captured Blackstone Fortress flew up to Ulthwe, somewhere deep in space.

'I know what I must do,' Rarned clenched his teeth. 'Emperor forgive me, but I must work with these aliens.'

And so he did.


	16. Catachan Falls

[i] Three years passed. Tyranid and necron fleets battled each other endlessly across the stars. Both forces, once considered unstoppable, were being ruthlessly pitted against one another in a war of attrition on a galactic scale. It was, as one High Lord of Terra put it, "the calamity of an unyielding barrier being confronted by an unrelenting force." Both ancient evils, both relentless in their destruction of the other.

Yet as the destruction wore on, both found their endless power to be in wane. The necron, who could for so long take their tomb worlds for granted, found that each world lost dented their ability to repair their fallen. The hive mind, which had taken comfort in its limitless numbers, found that even their eternal tide could be dammed. Yet still they killed. Necrons crushed by the broods, swarms flayed into ashen particles by gauss weaponry.

The toll was taken not only on the two battling forces, but also on the worlds where they fought. Caught in a godly crossfire, billions of people had nowhere to run to escape the rampaging swarms of metal or flesh. Continents were bombed to sterile ash to cleanse the tyranids. Other times, rampaging hive fleets would consume a world to replenish their numbers before plunging into the nearest tomb world. Humanity's thinning numbers fell fast.

The only race left relatively unaffected was the orks. Their hordes were so formidable and their worlds so densely populated that a wandering hive fleet would travel light years to strike elsewhere rather than risk defeat at the hands of this monstrous species. The war in the stars drew billions of them into the fight. As necron and tyranid swarms battled across planets, the orks too would plunge into the fray, excited by the sheer size of the conflict.

As orks joined the fray, the Imperium was forced into further decline. But the most significant defeat they suffered was not at the hands of any rampaging swarm, but a precise blow struck against one of the most infamous places in the galaxy…[/i]

The Doom Eagles Astartes had deployed to the jungles of Catachan knowing that it was the most dangerous world in the Imperium. Its position in the galaxy was as lethal as the savage jungle, which could claim an unwary traveler in a moment. It stood near the center of the galaxy, deep inside Ultima Segmentum, perilously exposed to the tyranids. It was the easternmost world in the Imperium. Its survival had only come about by a great effort, and expenditure of lives, against the encroaching hive fleets. It was now one world in a segmentum of airless rocks.

It was also a world at war. Mutants infested the jungles, fighting against the dwindling population of pure humans. When the tyranids and the necrons began their war, the Doom Eagles Astartes had thought they had seen the sign of Abaddon that they were looking for. Unfortunately it was not, and Catachan was host to a swarm of tyranids and a legion of necrons, who destroyed much of the jungle in their fight.

The people of Catachan withdrew to their cities, and, under the eyes of the Space Marines, they tried to weather the war around them, praying that their enemies would kill each other. It was not to be, for before alien forces could resolve the war in the jungle, yet another enemy arrived and added its claim to the world.

Like carrion flies, their drop pods pelted the world. The pox their rancid engines spread left miles of green jungle as brown, rotting desert. They pumped yellow fumes into the sky from their engines as they spread out across Catachan like a plague, swerving clear of places where aliens battled, and plunging straight at Catachan's cities. At the head of hordes of slobbering, diseased mutants dragged from the corners of the Plague Planet itself, was Mortarion and the Death Guard.

They destroyed city after city, collecting the dead and debris. Slaughtered animals were collected by the millions for Mortarion's dark project. As the warp opened up to swallow Catachan, a single horrific construction was put underway…

…

It was night.

The winged giant stalked up the ruins of the fortress' steps, towards the last bastion of imperials in this city. The giant's footfalls were echoed one hundred times by the warriors behind it, each man dressed in rusted old armor that was corroded with age and spotted with disease. The armor itself was ill, thus it was a bliss to the sane that the occupants of these suits were hidden from view by their masks and the darkness of the night that they ravaged.

All around the fortress, the Catachan city burned, its walls crumbled by shells from deep-throated cannon and its streets ravaged by mutants. The inhabitants were unprotected to the slaughter and slavery that awaited them. But each had only one thing awaiting them at the end of their ordeal: a place of honor inside Nurgle's monument.

Mortarion: the winged giant, was hidden by the darkness, not stopping as the defenders of the fort opened fire on him. Lasbolts pecked his armor harmlessly, not even slowing his advance. Behind him, his warriors, the Death Guard, silenced the guardsmen with throaty screams from their malformed bolters.

Reaching the ornate door to the fortress, Mortarion channeled his powers of the warp and blasted the ancient door open. His weapon: a scythe that killed all it kissed, lashed around at those few unlucky enough to be near him. Five of them fell, their flak-jackets torn lightly, but their bodies liquefying with rot. Their eyes turned to raisins, their blood turned to pus, their skin turned to paper. Soon, all that was left was their bones and sweetly smelling filth clinging to screaming skulls.

Inside the main foyer of the fortress, Mortarion beheld his worthy enemies. The Doom Eagles, in silver, with skull-helmets to match the skull mounted on their chapter's insignia. They, not the soft guardsmen, were what Mortarion had come to kill. There were nine such marines: a standard tactical squad, minus one battle brother. The sergeant's stone face glared at his immortal enemy while he raised his chainsword to point at Mortarion.

"Kill the traitor!" he yelled. "Send as many of them to hell as you can! It has been an honor serving with you!" Mortarion didn't even notice the guardsmen in the room, his eyes instead fixed on the sergeant. Bolterfire chipped his armor. They would pay.

As Death Guard boiled into the foyer, squirming in like worms, Mortarion charged the marines. Swatting two guardsmen aside, Mortarion raised his scythe and swung it at the helmet of the nearest marine. The man tried to bound back, firing wildly at the daemon-primarch, but to no defense. His head was lopped off: a mercifully short death. Mortarion was about to fall on the sergeant himself, when a rocket punched him to the floor. The marine responsible hurried to reload, shielded by two marines and nine guardsmen, or to Mortarion, two marines.

Three loyal plague marines leapt up to their primarch, rattling off shots into the loyalist Astartes. One was punched off his feet, pus and yellow blood oozing out of the hole where his brain once sat. Mortarion could smell the odor of the plague marine's insides. Sharp, like the smell of cooked meat, with a salty and sour tang.

"The Lord of All has come!" Mortarion announced to the defenders, spitting out a skull-headed worm as he rose up. "Embrace death, for now is your time to rot!" He jumped to his feet and charged the remaining imperials that shielded the marine with the rocket launcher. His mighty scythe cleaved the two remaining guardsmen in twain, then sliced around and reaped the two marines who blocked Mortarion's target, bright red blood spilling across the dirty black floor. The survivor fled, but took a meltagun hit to the back of the head. Mortarion seized the dying man by the shoulder to hold him up, while a brown stew oozed out of the man's mouthpiece. Mortarion ran a finger through the mess and licked it.

The last shot was taken and the fight was over.

"My lord," hissed one Death Guard, "a prisoner." He stepped away from his primarch to reveal two plague marines dragging the sergeant forward. His skin was turning pale, no doubt a result of the bleeding rend across his chest. The bald sergeant still could manage to show flaming hate in his eyes as he looked upon Mortarion.

"Leave us!" Mortarion barked to his marines. "Round up the rest of the population and prepare them. And know that soon we will be back with Papa Nurgle." The room emptied.

"Traitor," rasped the Doom Eagle, now on his knees.

"You are a corpse," giggled Mortarion, "from the day you slithered from the womb, you've been a corpse, just another asset of the Lord of All: Nurgle. He is your master, for you will be rotten longer than you will be healthy." Mortarion stepped around the dying man, circling him like a vulture. "Nurgle is the lord of decay, something all must do. I have come here to bring you home, to show you your true master." Mortarion bent down to look the man in the face. "Join the Death Guard, where you truly belong. Join us in the most sacred thing a person can do: decay."

"Madman."

"Have you ever met the Emperor?" Silence. "I have," Mortarion whispered.

"I know who you are."

"No, you don't." Mortarion grabbed the sergeant and lifted him over to the window. It looked out across a short balcony, which overlooked the city. Though it was dark, the marine could see as clearly as day.

"You see those people below? Those Catachans?" Mortarion asked. "How they are being herded to slaughter? They are destined for the tower of Nurgle, as is this city, as is the jungle. Have you seen it, Astartes?" He turned away and dragged the sergeant to another window to show him the tower. "See it?"

On the horizon was a tower, so tall that its base was not clear. It was built of the stacked remains of jungle foliage, animal meat, murdered Catachans and the debris of their cities. It could not have logically stood, but the powers of chaos held it up. From this distance, it was a pile of wreckage, but closer, and Mortarion could have seen the nurglings peering out of it, the flies clouding around it, the still-living victims chained to it. The top of the tower issued a constant black fog into the atmosphere.

"It fills this world with the power of decay, so it will be drawn up by Nurgle's loving arms and into his care. A daemon world, sergeant, we stand on a future daemon world of rot. This is the time of ending, sergeant. Everything is ending. Become a part of the galaxy's decay…" He realized he was wasting his breath and hurled the dead man aside. He stood and looked at the ruin of dead around him. He counted three Death Guard among the fallen, but many more than that in Imperial bodies.

'Death!' he thought jovially. 'They will all taste it. Death! The galaxy will taste it. That which all hoped would never end is finally decaying.' He twitched in mad excitement in anticipation of the favor he would receive from this conquest from Abaddon and Nurgle, and of the decay the galaxy would soon know.

Turning once more to look out the window for a victorious look at the tower, he saw instead a stranger, standing just outside pressed against the glass. He was tall and slender, in a black robe that left no flesh bare. His hands were gloved black, his feet booted. His head was hooded black and his face, covered in a metal mask, built to snugly fit the human face, neutral in expression. Behind those eyeholes: not even Mortarion's eyes could see anything else except…

Black.

Before he could make anything of this stranger, the figure leapt to the side, away from the window and out of sight. Perhaps he had a foe in this figure? Mortarion pursued the stranger outside but found he had vanished when he'd opened the window and stepped onto the balcony. Mortarion left himself a single second of puzzlement before he disregarded the incident completely and walked back into the foyer.

Less than a month later, Catachan was gone from real space. The tyranids and necrons on its surface were eradicated and its lush jungles were turned to breeding grounds for the diseases of the world's new master: Nurgle. The Doom Eagles had failed. None escaped.

…

The bronze doors opened and the mighty Angron stomped in, dripping with blood, eyes full of fire and voice full of thunder.

"AHHHH!" Angron roared, his voice surpassing the cries of the loudest mortal storm as he threw his axe into a shadowed corner of the arching room. "AHHHH!" He roared again, stomping down the long bronze chamber, past murals of blood and statues of horned warriors. With a rock fist, he slammed the solid bronze floor, causing the whole room to tremor. Dust fell from the ceiling, invisible even to Angron. One more roar escaped his throat before a laugh, as icy as Angron's temper was aflame, froze the room. Who would dare…. Angron looked around for the laugher, vowing to crush him, even if it were Abaddon himself.

"Defeated, were we?" asked the voice. Angron recognized it.

"Vashuss! Show yourself coward!" Angron screamed, looking for the much-smaller man. Unfurling his red and black wings, looking around with a horn-crowned head, Angron sought his prey.

"I'm right here, in the open." Angron looked down the long unholy chamber, where he thought he heard the voice, but saw nothing.

"Angron, of all the legions, why is it so ironic that a legion with such a fearsome name as the Worldeaters cannot take their own when all others have?" asked Vashuss, now behind him. Angron saw nothing when he looked.

"Orks," Angron snarled, "they were unstoppable. Khorne drank rivers of their blood, but they would keep coming until they had destroyed us." He turned his head. "Where are you?" Everytime Vashuss spoke, the words came from a different direction.

"Angron, if you truly want a world of your own to fulfill Abaddon's demand, then why not wait until the warp rift opens and conquer the world beneath it."

"What world?" Angron shrieked. "Abaddon has been insufferably silent about where the rift will appear. Tell me snake! In the name of Khorne TELL ME!"

"Calm yourself," Vashuss said.

"Khorne will feed on your soul!" Angron bellowed.

"I know where the warp rift will be and why it will open."

"Why?" Angron demanded, screaming out his soul in rage, "tell me snake! Abaddon is a fool for not hastening it. How will we finally unlock the False Emperor's door? TELL ME! NOW!"

"A fool, Angron?" Abaddon asked as he entered the long chamber, a retinue of Black Legion warriors behind him, stretching like a midnight serpent. "I am many things, but that is not one of them." His daemon sword was held forward. Angron suddenly remembered he was unarmed. "You fail me during this, the most important of hours, and you fly to your temple, howling madness." Abaddon's teeth clenched, on the edge of his own rage. If his temper was set loose, the two giants would clash here and now.

"Vashuss is here," Angron roared, "punish him!"

"Where?" Abaddon looked around. "Vashuss! In the name of Drach'nyen, emerge from your hiding place!" Nothing. "You are a fool Angron, I should think that one like you would know the powers of Chaos upon sight. Vashuss has gone to Armageddon."

"Is that where the rift will be? Why did you not TELL US!" Angron demanded. "If that is so, when the rift appears, Armageddon is MINE."

"I told no one so it would remain a secret, for no Imperial spies," Abaddon replied. "But the hour is near enough. Soon the rift will awaken and the time of ending will be upon us all." He made a turn to leave, but turned back around. "Don't fail me again." He departed before Angron could bellow his flaming reply.

…

"Maimaxinal II," Rarend sighed as the rocky planet passed by his ship. "Segmentum Solar, once a teeming hive world. Gone." He watched the navigator of his barge: one of the only crewmen on board who wasn't a servitor. "It is the fifteenth planet so far we've crossed to find nothing on, is it not?" He looked beside his seat where Skander Moorus sat, chained to a chair by glowing chains, in a pod so encrusted with purity seals that some naïve fool might take to worshipping it. Through the glass, Skander frowned.

"So the better. Fifteen planets and not one sign of Imperial life. The necrons and tyranids do well to destroy the Imperium. Death to the Fa…" Rarend pressed a button on his bracelet, shutting out the noise from inside the pod, silencing Skander's words.

"Abaddon hopes to attack Terra. But what if the necrons should reach it first? What then? Will we not both taste defeat? This is the way it should be Skander, between mankind and chaos, which we will win, not mankind and filthy xenos. You should not be pleased at this destruction." He took his finger off the button.

"Chaos, not your Imperium, will be the victor!" Skander shouted. "Soon our long journey will end and you will do that thing the eldar threw onto you, and you will see it was all in vain. You don't even know where the rift will open." Rarned's heart sped up.

"You know?" His silence confirmed it. "What will open it?" That is a question the Inquisition needed to have answered. "You will be much more than my key to Mars," Rarend said, "you will tell us where chaos will come from."


	17. How Inquisitor Rarend Destroyed Mars

Upon the flickering screen, the communications officer of the Departmento Munitorum looked impassiontely at his screen, ready to patch the next wave of reports through to Terra. One by one, they appeared.

[i] +Tyranid presence in Ultima Segmentum reduced to 9% by Necrons. Praise the Emperor+

+Tyranid presence in Segmentum Solar nonexistent. Praise the Emperor+

+Tyranid presence in Segmentum Tempestus reduced to 5% by necrons. Praise the Emperor+

+Tyranid presence in Segmentum Obscurus reduced to 4% by necrons. Praise the Emperor+

+Tyranid presence in Segmentum Pacificus nonexistent. Praise the Emperor+

+Necron attacks up 1941% in past 6 months. The faithful shall never be defeated+

+Necron presence on all sectors uncountable+

+Ork and necron forces battle across the galaxy. Reports will be available when received+ [/i]

The final message made even the communications officer shudder.

[i] +Imperial Guard manpower in danger of depletion. Look to Terra and we will prevail+ [/i]

Then another message came up, for direction to the commander of the fleet around Terra.

[i]+Man claiming to be an inquisitor requests entry into space around Holy Terra. Carries with him a chaos traitor of the highest noteriety. Allow through?+ [/i]

…

Holy Terra.

A towering jewel of hives and cathedrals, fortresses and keeps. The beating heart of the Imperium where lay the Administratum and billions of toiling adepts who labor to churn the wheel of government in laborious circles with their endless hours of slaving servitude.

Underneath the looming shadows of the spires, which were as much works of art as they were structures, a single hooded figure moved amidst the crowd, covered in a long sheet, hugging himself against the cold on the planet-spanning city. He trailed like a shadow behind a column of humming pilgrims, whose long white capes were all they wore to show their humbleness, swinging censers, as their bleeding feet took them closer to the Imperial palace. So far, Cypher had been following this group for two weeks. Did they intend to march forever?

Ducking to hide his face from a passing guardsman, the great man carried on. Giant but silent, ever closer to the palace, to the Golden Throne, to the Emperor. Beneath his disguise, it was impossible to see his Dark Angel colours. Or his sword.

'Soon, my task will be complete,' Cypher thought.

…

Kelvenarr looked across the data slate in front of him. The Inquisitor lord looked over every rune, every figure, every fact, every piece of information that there was to be seen on the slate. He looked up from it to the younger inquisitor that stood before him in his office.

"So, you've come at last, Rarend?" asked Kelvenarr, his old, wrinkled lips as dry as his tone. The inquisitor lord rose to his feet and put down the data slate. "Our logs indicate that you were to deliver a report from Macharia. It is years overdue. An explanation is to be had." Rarend held his chin high. He had come to Holy Terra, to this keep of the inquisition to speak with one of the highest ranking lords in the whole organization. Now, here he was, and he was snagged by an old failing.

"The report was lost. I was attacked by eldar. I escaped and was able…" Rarend began.

"Able to apprehend a dangerous fugitive of chaos?" asked Kelvenarr, the dusty pistons of his white power armor shook as they took him across his office to a closed door: the only spot in his office that was not clear glass. Through the glass, Rarend could see the spires of Holy Terra. He opened the door and headed in, leading Rarend through the corridors of the inquisitorial fortress, to another door, iron bound and scrawled with the symbol of the Inquisition. He pushed it open to reveal a morbid room without light, with metal walls, containing only four shelves on its walls, despite the vault's great size. Rarend hurried in after Kelvenarr, who guided himself to a shelf near the back. It was stocked with material the inquisition was "reviewing." Mostly tomes, but some metal boxes lay upon the shelf, containing censored artifacts. Kelvenarr took out one such box and placed it on top of the shelf, to give him better access to the volumes of tomes that lay in the vault. Through what little light he could get from the doorway, Rarend could see a single word on the box, labeling that which lay inside:

Damnatus.

"Here," Kelvenarr said, taking out a tome and placing the box back where It belonged. "This is what I seek." He took Rarend to the light and showed him the spine of the book. Rarend read its high gothic writing. Beneath the writing, the symbol of chaos undivided. Upon the book's face, the name Skander Moorus.

"Indeed, my catch was a worthy one, was it not?" Rarend asked.

"Skander Moorus was no fool, Rarend. He had a high standing in the chaos legions and more than a few crimes to his name. He is one of our most hated enemies. We have battled him since the Grey Knights turned on us and you expect me to think that I will not grow suspicious when a lost inquisitor returns to the field with him in custody?" Kelvenarr held the book behind him. "Why did you come to Holy Terra? Why not another planet where other inquisitors may await?"

"To give Skander the light of the Emperor, so that he may repent before the Imperial palace or die by a Terran hand," Rarend reasoned. "When I entered this solar system, I was let through only because I had Skander. That shows some trust."

"We let you land because you had Skander and only because you had Skander. But you may be tainted," Kelvenarr sighed. "You must undergo examination. A true servant will have no worries from that." Rarend was already being tested. He stood before an open vault filed with censored artifacts. This was a trap. Ten squads of Inquisitorial troops probably awaited just out of sight.

"I will undergo examination," Rarend agreed. "I wil give you my story, everything." Things were going according to plan. The Adeptus Mechanicus would examine his cybernetic body parts no doubt. He thought of the virus loaded within them, and how it would travel from the mechanicus syringe to the circuits underneath Terra, up through the transmission beams and into the mainfrain controlling the cannon batteries on Luna, earth's moon, whose formidable bases could defend it from attack. Soon the Void Dragon would be dead, Rarend was sure.

…

Skander prepared for his judgment. His hands sat behind him, restrained by chains built of adamantium. Apart from his ragged trousers, Skander wore nothing, exposing the large chaos rune tattooed across his heart. A seal inscribed with prayers had been pressed over it, the hot wax burning his skin. He sat this way in the middle of a circular chamber, ringed by statues of imperial heroes. He lifted his head as the sealed door peeled open, to allow an old inquisitor lord into the room, flanked by armed men, who trained their lasguns on him.

"In the name of the inquisition…" the inquisitor began.

"Spare me your rhetoric. I am guilty of whatever crimes you can think of to label me with," Skander spat back. The inquisitor nodded.

"Then, in the name of the Emperor, repent. Explain thyself."

"To who?" Skander sighed, "who are you to judge me?" He briefly struggled against the shackles. "If you want an explanation to our defection, then know that you made war upon us, and we sought chaos to endure your judgment." The inquisitor took a step towards him.

"You were not only space marines but members of the holy Inquisition. Now, you are bloodthirsty and feral, worshippers of chaos. How dare you," the inquisitor said, his deep voice throwing a shadow over Skander's soul.

"Bloodthirsty and feral? Traits we had when we were space marines, traits all space marines have. You think your Astartes are heroes?" asked Skander. The inquisitor stayed silent, listening. "There is only one thing that separates me from him," he nodded to a statue of Rogal Dorn in the corner, "our opinion of chaos. When it comes to it, the space marines are just as evil as any other servant of chaos."

"Your heresy has made you a…."

"The Iron Hands suppressed a Slaaneshi presence in the decadent subsector of Contqual. Although the people begged forgiveness, that didn't stop their bloodlust. Dressed in their chapter's respected colours, descendents of Ferrus Manus used prized Imperial weapons blessed by the Adeptus Mechanicus, to herd screaming citizens, now untouched by chaos, into gas chambers," Skander impassively watched the inquisitor shake his head.

"Chaos does not…"

"The chaos warriors of the Purge once killed fourteen billion Imperial citizens. The Blood Swords space marine chapter killed almost nine times that in some poorly planned Exterminatus actions. And they had the nerve to list it in their annals as an enemy engagement," Skander said.

"You have done exactly that…"

"The Blood Ravens destroyed the world of Cyrene and didn't tell anyone why. The Imperium found out eventually, but I wonder how many other Cyrenes never received an explanation," interrupted Skander yet again. "What other massacres have been perpetrated by your so-called heroes?" The inquisitor stomped his foot.

"You shall not insult the Astartes again, traitor. You will account for all the world you destroyed," the inquisitor barked.

"I was just gaining favor with the chaos gods. Don't judge me on the people I've murdered, you've shown us over and over again that you couldn't care less about the people. I'm talking about surviving alongside chaos. I'm one who knows the truth, and I take advantage of my knowledge. Chaos is spawned from emotion. As long as there is humanity, there is chaos." Skander paused, to let the inquisitor speak, but when he said nothing, Skander continued. "You cannot defeat chaos. Kill as many daemons as you want, cover me in seals. The only way to destroy chaos is to kill off humanity. There are thus only two options: die or join chaos. It's a truth I learned while on the run from you." The inquisitor nodded and raised his face to the ceiling.

"Then it is understood. Now, in the name of the Inquisition, thou shalt be purged with fire." At this point an old woman entered the room, dressed in rags, carried on shackles between two soldiers who struggled to keep her still, a collar around her neck. "Now, tell us what you know," the inquisitor said.

"We're not at all different, we both worship an enormously powerful psychic monster who demands death and sows suffering. The only difference between the Emperor and the chaos gods is a name. Perhaps its time the Imperial Eagle joined the other symbols of chaos on the eight-pointed star." The inquisitor stood calmly aside as the woman was brought up to Skander. She wailed and coughed as the inquisitor forced her head to look straight at Skander's face.

"We know you know from where chaos will come. You will tell us," the inquisitor said as the woman's eyes flashed white, spilling light forward into him.

"Extinction or a life in the warp!" Skander screamed, "chaos cannot lose while you still live!" The inquisitor did not move while the whole chamber was filled with energy: a hurricane of lightning that flashed across the wall. One of the soldiers who did not hold a shackle exploded, showering everything in guts and pieces of uniform. The other tried to flee, but exploded into a crimson spray as he ran, his bones powdered to dust. Those two survivors held onto their end of the woman's shackles and fought against the effort of the pull. Then, like a flash of quicksilver lightning, the storm was gone. The woman fell back, men's blood colouring her face red, staining her clothes. The inquisitor shook a piece of bone off his sleeves and checked the side of his head, feeling the gentle laceration.

"Quickly sir," one of the two survivors said, passing the inquisitor a quill and parchment. Both soldiers plugged their ears and fled the room, knowing they would be shot if they heard what the woman said. The inquisitor listened calmly as she spoke, recording everything. The woman herself, eyes wide, unblinking, and body convulsing, did not understand the words she spoke, if her exhausted mind even knew her mouth was moving at all.

"Interesting," the inquisitor said as he read what he'd recorded after the last word had left the psyker's cracked lips. Armageddon was where chaos would come from? Inquisitor Rarend was out to destroy Mars and steal an ancient artifact of the Adeptus Mechanicus: Project Gaia? Rarend worked for the Eldar? He pressed a button on his earpiece. "Morchus, send a cleaner up to interrogation cell 53536 and a firing squad to dispose of this psyker." He looked at Skander. The man had been turned inside out. Glistening organs, white, blue, and red, flopped out from between bones that stuck out from meaty muscle at unnatural angles. His jaw, which has spat heresy, sat on his lap, the tongue still within it, pearly teeth visible amidst the brackish sea of red. His intestines were like a heap of fat pasta coiled across his legs, dripping brownish fluid onto the ground. Blood formed a growing black pond around his chair, leaking out from ruptured arteries. His head was reduced to a soggy pile of grey brain, mixed with a stew of flesh and white bone.

"Actually," the inquisitor said in his earpiece, "send two cleaners."

…

[i] Three years earlier… [/i]

"Rarend," said the eldar warlock as he stood in the hangar of the eldar shuttle, hovering close to the isolated star fortress over the embattled world of Piscana, "remember what it is you must do." Rarend looked doubtfully at the eldar pod wherein sat the lashing, kicking form of Skander Moorus of the Grey Knights, his psyker collar firmly implanted around his spinal cord. Suddenly, he had his doubts. There sat a heretic, a monster, hunted by inquisitors such as himself. Now he was about to take one descending step into the cellar where Skander brooded. Was this the first trip that would send him on a damning plunge straight into hell? But it was a service to mankind that he was going to do, whatever the result.

"I…perhaps," Rarend could see the four eldar warriors around the warlock grow tense, alien guns prepared.

"You're unsure?" the warlock asked, "If there was a way to make up the damage you will do, would you take it?" Rarend stayed silent. "Rarend, there is an ancient Adeptus Mechanicus artifact on Mars, built from machinery from the Dark Age of Technology, so you humans name the era. Project Gaia. With it, you could undo the damage inflicted on Mars. With it you could restore life to the world." Rarend listened while the eldar explained…

…

Kelvenarr had already sent out a message to the nearest inquisitorial fortress, warning them of Skander's message. Word would soon be sent to Armageddon and its possible taint would be investigated. A message was sent to the Astartes too. This new revelation would surely attract their interests. For now though, Kelvenarr had another, smaller matter to see to: a certain rogue inquisitor named Rarend. He traced his prey to Mars.

"Lord Inquisitor, the man was legitimate, under the colours of the Emperor, with his blessing he did act," promised the archivist as grimly uniformed stormtroopers marched in a double-file into the compound where the archives were kept. Now and then, one bumped into him, causing the feeble old man to stumble. "These holy things are here under my watch and the watch of my custodians. We are loyal."

"But did you let the inquisitor in?" asked Kelvenarr impatiently, crossing his arms across his power armor and glaring down at the archivist like a judge to the condemned. "Speak!"

"Deny the entry of an inquisitor? What could have I done except oblige?" the archivist shrank away from Kelvenarr's enraged gaze. "What could you ask of me, a humble archivist?" Kelvenarr pushed the old man aside and looked at the towering cube structure ahead of him. Already there was a valkyrie landing on top of it, a team of elite troopers leaping forth from its armored belly to assail the archives from above. The sound of shattering glass lit up the Martian air.

"Do make them stop," begged the archivist. Kelvenarr ignored him as he approached the stormtrooper captain.

"Squad 3, move up the eastern wall and secure the rear exits," he spoke into his vox-caster. "Yes sir?" he asked with a smart salute upon seeing Kelvenarr.

"Rarend has probably already left with whatever he took," Kelvenarr stated. "IF you find him, kill him on sight." Kelvenarr turned back to the archivist, hiding his outrage behind a mask of professional calm. Looking into the wrinkled man's eyes he set a hard hand onto his twig shoulder.

"Tell me, old man, what did the rogue inquisitor steal?" he asked.

"Rogue? Emperor forgive me."

"What did he steal?" Kelvenarr repeated, squeezing the man's shoulder like he would strangle an attacker. The man yelped like a pup and stomped his foot.

"Project Gaia, that old tube thing that everybody lost interest in." Kelvenarr released him gratefully and decided against torture.

"What does it do?"

"It has the power to restore life to a world," the archivist cringed, clasping his shoulder in a thin hand where stick-thin fingers hung off of and wiry tendons heaved beneath the surface of papery skin. "It is fired down onto the world, no matter how sterile it is, and strikes the surface. From there, it causes a chemical reaction with the bacterial proteins inside the tube and mixes it with the local atmosphere to create a sustainable biosphere of…" the archivist trailed off. "Fire it at a dead world and it comes back to life. Though this only means bacteria and simple things. Evolution must run its course, but given enough ages, a world seeded by Project Gaia could become as fertile as Holy Terra was in her virgin years." Kelvenarr knew this was essential to include in his report.

"Why did the project fall through?" asked Kelvenarr.

"It was too weak. The makers wanted an instant ecosystem of complex life forms in a tube. Their goal went unfulfilled, its team died, and the project became lost in the maze of this Martian government." Kelvenarr nodded and returned to the archives. Rarend had left Terra and come to Mars had he? There were few places other than back to Terra he could have gone from here. Was he still on Mars?

Kelvenarr would never know the answer to that question. Nor did he ever learn what killed him.

…

Mars was consumed in fire hotter than the surface of the sun. Cities, forges, and ancient palaces on the surface were melted or turned to dust in the amount of time it takes for a crisp autumn leaf to drift down from its barren branch to the ground on a windy day. The deaths of billions happened in as much time: the whole populace of the revered world fed to the furnace of the inferno to receive instant cremation. Laser lances powerful enough to destroy a small moon slammed into the planet, boring deep holes into its red crust and striking into the mantle of the red world. Salvo after salvo of torpedoes cracked the world's foundations, causing the world's molten core to shudder and then spill forth to the surface, echoing blood pouring from lacerated flesh. Nothing was too holy to be destroyed by the assault, nothing too pure or too powerful. The primal forces of raw destruction cared not what it consumed and it showed no decency as thirteen thousand years of Imperial heritage were broken apart. When it was finished, the red planet was black and lifeless, unsuited for even a micron of wriggling life. It was a classical exterminatus.

The culprit? Luna, earth's moon; its defense grid hijacked.

Only one survivor fled the world, unseen and unheard, but alive. Unsinged by the fire, unbroken by the shockwaves, Void Dragon's intelligence leapt for the nearest tombworld where it could make sense of what had happened. Unfortunately, the nearest tombworld was a silent, empty place, which was important due to its proximity to Holy Terra. The Void Dragon merged with the world.

…

Asurmen stood with the coven of farseers on the bridge of a battleship, named in his honor. Speak the name in human tongue and it would be "Hand of Asuryan." They hovered with a single other craft: the Blackstone Fortress, over a distinctive black world: a tomb world, left undefended by its necron fleets. It was the closest such planet to Mars.

"We have received confirmation," came the eldar voice over the intercom, "Mars is destroyed." There was no celebration, just stoic silence.

"He has done it," Asurmen said to himself, "he has actually done it." He crossed his hands. "I pray he saved Project Gaia. When this is over, it might be the last hope the galaxy will have, the last seed from which life may come." In all his lifetimes, Asurmen had seldom known such a dedicated human as Rarend. "End this," he said. With Mars destroyed, Void Dragon would be forced to manifest here. But whatever form he took, Asurmen would not give him the time to display it.

The Blackstone Fortress fired. A long bar of brilliant warp energy sliced into the tomb world, causing its surface to ripple and shift. Red cracks appeared across its mighty sphere. As the warp tore the world apart, the tomb world grew smaller and smaller while the storm of flashing energy consumed its rippling surface. It served to merely know that somewhere down there, Void Dragon was being disintegrated just as his brother C'tan. Asurmen didn't so much as blink until the last fleck of light had vanished and the tomb world was left a crumbled moon. This world, unlike Mars, yielded no survivors.

"One more," Asurmen whispered, "one more." Rarend had, at long last, done his job.


	18. Afennor the Ultramarine

It had been difficult to find the Dark Angels and it was risky to take shelter amongst them, but it was beside a space marine where Rarend felt the safest from the hounds of the Inquisition, who had yet to make his status as a rogue public. Therefore it was a blessing that he was accepted into the quarters of the Dark Angels garrison. Rarend specifically located the one Astartes whom he knew and trusted: Usoran of the Dark Angels.

"…do you think we can?" Rarend asked Usoran as the pair walked through the hallway. Behind them, eight honored battle-brothers of the Dark Angels walked in a double-file, bolters held high, almost lost in the poorly lit hallway of the monastery.

"I can get you off Terra to the inquisitorial fortress on Maiagnar," replied Usoran, "there, you will reconnect with your staff. Now, with all respect inquisitor, this is a hallowed meeting of utmost formality. Grave happenings have put us all on edge."

"The Inquisition is welcomed wherever the Emperor's light rests," replied Rarend, "let no man raise a word against my attendance of this hallowed gathering. Just keep in mind: I need very much to escape this world to see to my duties elsewhere."

"Why did the Inquisition send a man in as great a hurry as you to sit in upon our gathering?" Usoran asked.

"I am leaving Terra. Other parts of the galaxy will wish to hear news of whatever conclusion is reached here," Rarend said, having engineered the lie beforehand. It sounded convincing to him. Usoran pushed the open the door at the end of the hall and led him into the rounded chamber beyond.

The chamber was bowl-shaped with a vaulted ceiling. Chairs fit for giants stood in tiers around the wall. Seated at these places were marines from every one of the surviving chapters of the Adeptus Astartes. At the opposite end of the chamber, a mighty throne was positioned in a gap between the chairs. Some said this ornate throne of marble and granite had once seated Guilliman himself. It was definitely big enough. Standing before the throne was a dreadnought that Rarend knew as the "Black Tomb." Around him, the remnants of the depleted Ultramarines chapter. There were more scouts than battle-brothers in attendance. Rarend noticed only the true space marines got seats while the scouts made due sitting with their heads bowed at the feet of the seats.

'There's fewer men here than I thought,' Rarend's thoughts muttered as he counted four hundred Astartes. That number did include the Black Tomb, Usoran, and the Lamenters chapter master: Spectros, who occupied the western end of the chamber.

"This meeting is commenced!" thundered the Black Tomb.

…

"Why do you insist so strongly on keeping your garrison stationed around Holy Terra?" asked Rarend, "its almost as if you were…expecting someone." The meeting was over. Most of the marines had cleared out, but the Ultramarines and Dark Angels remained. Usoran had just finished talking with Spectros about their joint-efforts on guarding Holy Terra and had dismissed the Lamenters marine moments before. Usoran now sat hunched over in his chair, fiddling with a data slate.

"Does chaos not threaten our bosom? Do you not know the tragedy that has befallen Mars?" asked Usoran.

"It seemed…nevermind," Rarend looked up at the Black Tomb. The Ultramarines battle-brothers had cleared from the room. Rarend knew that they were headed to Armageddeon to help quell chaos if it should be discovered there. Only the multitudes of Ultramarine scouts remained with their master, sitting respectfully around him, listening to his lesson. "I recall the days when theirs was a bigger order of noble warriors. Now look at them, reduced to a vanguard of scouts."

"Speak respectfully of them, I'm sending you into their care," Usoran replied as he looked up from his data slate. "Battle-brothers, return to our fortress and resume your meditation. I shall join you momentarily." The Dark Angels rose up as one and left Rarend and Usoran alone.

"What do you…"

"I insist that I stay here," Usoran said sharply. "The place you wish to go to is on the road to the warzone where the Ultramarines go. See?" he showed Rarend the data slate. Indeed, the world Rarend desired was near their destination. "They shall deposit you there and you may return to your duties."

"I insist I be at the care of someone I can trust…"

"You already know one of them. Recall a boy by the name of Afennor Zodan?"

"No."

"I recall handing him to you from a wrecked tau ship."

"By Inquisitorial edict, I would rather it be you, who have dealt with me in the past." Rarned vaguely began to remember something about a boy named Afennor.

"Rarend old friend," Usoran leaned closer to him, "do not suspect me a traitor, but there are things about my duties that I'm afraid you don't fully comprehend. Don't ask me anything else." Usoran stood up and walked across to the Black Tomb as his scouts stood up to leave. Rarend followed him, bowing to the dreadnought as the scouts parted.

"Inquisitor Rarend?" one of the younger, smaller, scouts asked.

"What does the inquisitor desire of me?" the Black Tomb asked Rarend, gesturing with his fist to silence the scout.

"Rarend needs to be sent to Maiagnar. He has requested that I send him, but I wish to cede the task to you, since your fleet will be crossing the area," Usoran said. Rarend nodded to confirm. He looked up into the Black Tomb's "face" and wondered what the man looked like as he lay beneath the thick armored plating of the fabled machine.

"This task might sidetrack our course. A single day cannot be easily spared from our voyage. Governor-Militant Armstrong is not a patient man."

"Governor-Militant Armstrong already has the Space Wolves giving him a headache," noted Rarend, wishing to speak ill of the Space Wolves in front of Usoran. "Will he not give an additional detachment of the holy Astartes an extra day or two? Perhaps the man would be better inclined to wait if he knew the task had something to do with the Inquisition." That silenced the Black Tomb, long enough for Rarend to consider the scout who had addressed him.

He was small and young for a scout, hurriedly implanted with as much of the unnatural augmentations as could be given. His hair was cut to the point of baldness. The man, or boy, Rarend wasn't sure which title suited him better, was only beginning to thicken with the distinctive Astartes muscle. His limbs were still slender and his face still bony. But underneath his blue uniform and unnaturally augmented appearance was a youth that sparked Rarend's memory.

'Oh yeah, him.' Rarned lost interest in Afennor and looked back at the Black Tomb.

"I will send him advance word of the cause of our delay," the Black Tomb thundered, "more than a week off course is too long. Skander's prediction is imminent I fear, and the gears of fate have churned us perilously close to the prepice of the apocalypse."

"Indeed. Logan seemed convinced that the Time of Ending was upon us when I spoke with him last," Usoran mentioned. He looked back at his data slate. "Of course, the Space Wolves have been predicting Russ' return since…" his voice trailed off.

"What is it?" Rarend asked, leaning in to get a look at the slate. Usoran turned away from Rarend's eyes.

"It is chapter matters, nothing to you."

"Hiding anything from an inquisitor's eyes is prodding my suspicions," Rarend sternly noted, holding his head high. He would never imagine this marine, whom he considered a friend, to be a traitor. Still, the conduct of an inquisitor still needed to be maintained.

"Then we will take you," the Black Tomb said, "it shall not be at our convinience, but our duties are to the Imperium first and ourselves second. Shall we be taking on any of your staff?"

"Just me," Rarend stammered, worried that Usoran would draw his chainsword and reveal that he'd received word of Rarend's newfound standing. "Please hurry me, I am on a short schedule. When will your fleet depart?"

"My fleet consists of a single ship. It departs tonight," the Black Tomb said. "By the Emperor, we shall root out chaos when it is found." Usoran walked off to the side and began to fiddle further with his slate. Rarend followed, and Afennor followed him.

"Do you remember me?" Afennor asked, his voice deeper than what Rarend vaguely remembered.

"We shall have ample time to speak, initiate," Rarend said. "Usoran? I must see…" Rarend pocketed the slate.

"You don't need to see anything," Usoran replied.

"With all respect, captain of the Dark Angels, but a sharp tone with an Inquisitor is not to be smiled upon," Afennor warned, head bowed.

"A space marine does well to keep his own chapter's interests in mind and does not challenge another marine who outranks him by several centuries," Usoran replied. "Were your chapter not so decimated, you would still be testing to be an initiate." Usoran held out a green-armored hand to Rarend. Not wanting to appear afraid, Rarend shook it. It was like having his hand trodden on. "Whenever we meet again, if ever we do," Usoran said. He turned about and left the chamber. Rarend looked at Afennor. A naïve scout like him would make a good companion for the voyage. He had to take Project Gaia with him and a scout would not ask such annoying questions that could expose him. Rarend only hoped Afennor would not be bold enough to challenge an inquisitor.

"Let us go then, Afennor, I need you to help me pack my things," Rarend said. "Just don't look too hard at any of it."


	19. The End of Cypher's Road

Usoran rushed into the command room inside the fortress upon one of the tallest hive spires on Terra, where the Dark Angels made their base. Inside, Captain Terrano stood over a pair of chapter serfs as they worked on the communications machine, hanging from the wall and covered in lights, like a verticle night sky.

"Where was it?" Usoran demanded. He ran up to Terrano. "The squads are prepared to head out. Where was it?" Terrano indicated a small map-display in the corner of the communications machine.

"Five miles north of the Imperial Palace. My squads are on standby." Terrano yawned as he regarded the map. "Do you think it was the Cypher?"

"A man in our colours? Our surveillance cannot be wrong," replied Usoran. "This is our first sighting in almost four years. I intend to act on it. If this mysterious man was the Cypher then I know exactly where he's going, and I intend to confront him there." Usoran turned and headed out. "All squads prepare: we're moving on the Imperial Palace." Terrano sprinted across to him.

"You cannot just a take a whole battle company of the Dark Angels into the Imperial Palace!"

"You must think like your prey, Terrano. This man has been bound for the Impeiral Palace for thousands of years. I know where he is going to be. Send warning to the Adeptus Custodes."

"Usoran…"

"We have been searching for this man for thirteen thousand years," Usoran whispered, "I intend that it will be one of us who strikes the killing blow to earn our salvation. It cannot be any other way."

…

In these dying days, when the enfeebled Imperium's defenses of its own Emperor had weakened in both quality and quantity, it was possible to perform what Cypher did. In this time, when the Adeptus Custodes numbered at one tenth its original tally, did Cypher make his gamble. Were the Imperial vigil around the god-Emperor weaker, Cypher would have performed this feat thousands of years ago. Now, when those Custodes who could be trusted to remain by the Emperor's side numbered only thirty, Cypher could strike.

Communications were dead, slain, by an unknown force of technological prowess. Some signal, some virus, some thing muted the entire network inside the Imperial Palace in an unprecedented show of brazen infiltration. The problem could not be addressed by the ashes of the Adeptus Mechanicus, who were unable to be reached in time. The interlopers therefore faced the naked wrath of the Adeptus Custodes and their Dark Angel allies. Thunderhawks roared into the docking bays around the palace. Marines entered the mountain-sized fortress from all sides, sealing off the mighty gates, deaf to the protests of the sentries.

'Beyond unbelievable,' Usoran thought as he walked down the ramp of his thunderhawk to confront one of the Custodes guards. The man was taller than even his Astartes height, dressed in bright gold and a winged, spired helmet. In his hands, one of the fabled halberds, across his face, nothing but discipline and restraint. He and Usoran did not exchange greetings; both men had no wish but to address the danger.

"The Fallen, so your men have told me," the Custodes said, "Captain Usoran, while your unannounced move upon the palace is an act that one would consider…unorthodox at best, I must wearily admit that it might be needed." Usoran did not flinch at the Custodes mentioning the Fallen. There was no secret the Imperium had that these men did not know. Lesser men whispered fanciful stories of Custodes being required to memorize the names of every Imperial citizen everywhere. Laughable, yet in some strange way, believable. Usoran felt like a normal man or even a child next to this titan of condensed humanity.

"Ten of my men watch the main entrance, their feet shall not tread beyond its walls. Elsewhere, my warriors establish perimeters. Reinforcements have been called for. Expect the entire chapter to come if the Emperor wills it," Usoran continued as he and the Custodes walked off the landing platform and into the arching, echoing chambers of the palace. They passed room after cavernous room of adepts hiding under their working benches until the crisis abated. They lowered their heads when the two men passed. Usoran felt inclined to fall to his knees and beg the senior warrior for instructions.

"The companions will remain where they are. No man is required near the Eternity Gate," boomed the Custodes in a voice that could shake down a mountain. The companions: the personal guard of the Emperor. Never would they stray from his side.

"Brother Usoran," beeped a voice in Usoran's earpiece. "Converge on my location. Beaming through now. Rogues: two spotted." Usoran nodded, knowing this earpiece was his only advantage over the Custodes. At least whatever blackout the Fallen had cast across the palace had not silenced his gear.

"I think we might be against many," Usoran warned, "my battle-brothers have located two invaders."

"The Fallen may send one thousand if they want," the Custodes stated, "and they will find no breach in our vigilance." He followed Usoran through the Imperial Palace, following his instructions, each footstep taking them through hallowed halls grander than anything most men would ever see in their lifetimes. Support columns hundreds of meters high, murals thirteen thousand years old and still being worked on, statues by the ten thousand. Through they went until, in a pillar-flanked hallway, they met with three Custodes and four Dark Angels, their white robes fluttering delicately over their dark green armor. One of the Custodes was crouched over a fallen Astartes in black armor, his form ripped apart by bolterfire, his ruby blood wetting the blue carpet.

"How, in the name of the Emperor, did this one get in?" asked Usoran, looking at the helmeted warrior. A Fallen in the Imperial Palace? Unthinkable! The Black Legion itself would soon follow. "Damn, it's not him." Every Dark Angel knew whom he meant, every Custodes only suspected it.

"This man wears whisper-vox sets in their helmets," the Custodes who hunched over the marine said as he lifted off his helmet. "It is how they are communicating without our beacons listening." Usoran looked about the hall.

"Report! We have no time to stand while the Emperor's house is violated. Where are the others? You saw two here," he said.

"Disappeared. Three of our brothers chase him, sir," explained one of the Dark Angels, "my lord, if the Custodes can infiltrate their whisper-vox sets, we might be able to pinpoint the other traitors." The Custodes nodded as one. "When we have found them with this dead man's set, we will be a hunt of Dark Angels, sir, to hunt the Fallen down one by one." Usoran nodded as he waited eagerly for the Custodes to finish his work on the inside of the man's helmet.

As he waited, he looked at the dead Fallen. The man appeared young, but his scars crossed his face in ugly wrinkles. His albino hair was short, his cheek was tattooed with an odd symbol of a black-winged dove. He seemed calm, at peace in his newfound death. Usoran felt some peace at seeing him dead, knowing one less Fallen now remained for their hunt to catch.

"Ah," the Custodes held the helmet up to his ear. "The signals are faint. They indicate the largest concentration of Fallen have a position of 90 degrees, 70, 42029, 109. North…" as he continued, Usoran saw the Custodes grow fearful: a disheartening sign indeed.

"They're moving on the Throne Room," warned one of them.

…

Brother Rossus, veteran of seven hundred battles, ducked behind a marble pillar as bolterfire ripped a gauge of marble from the pillar he hid behind. Beside him, the fallen bodies of an Adeptus Custodes guardian and a pair of adepts lay, murdered. Peeking out, he fired at the dark shapes behind the columns on the opposite end of the room. Where Rossus had believed the enemy numbered only one: Cypher, he had been wrong. Had an entire chaos legion arrived in support? He and his squad fought with three times their number in this sacred gallery with three Custodes guards: two of whom were dead.

"You shall not stand in the way of the plan!" yelled one shrill voice from the other end of the room. "Do not resist us, we do not want this!" The firing briefly stopped as the foe silenced their guns. "Surrender!" Rossus looked out from behind his pillar, spotting the giant form of a black armored marine aiming his bolter out from behind a dusty pillar in a shadowed corner of the circular room they crouched in. They were not far from the mighty Eternity Gate itself: the door that guarded the entrance to the Emperor's throneroom. Rossus had fought for the Emperor before, yet never so directly. Fail here and it would take more than a crusade to earn valediction. He took cover again.

"Dark Angel," said the final Custodes in the room, dashing over to his side. Rossus reloaded his bolter and prepared to kill. "The others must be summoned."

"I've already put out calls," Rossus replied.

"The remainder of my outfit. Please Dark Angel, can you send one of yours to your thunderhawks and recover working equipment to contact the rest…" the sound of defiant bolterfire from their side of the room drowned him out. Looking out, Brother Rossus sighted the traitor he'd seen before. Firing mercilessly, Rossus send rocket after rocket into the marine's body, blasting chunks from his armor. Down to the floor the doomed man fell into a pile. Rossus looked back at the Custodes.

"The request my have been parroted down the line. Coms must have knowledge of what has happened in here," Rossus cringed as the Dark Angel closest to him fell to the ground: a smoking hole in his faceplate. Rossus leaned back out and fired the remains of his clip into the shadows on the other side of the room, searching for a dark-armored target to slay. He ducked back to reload. The Custodes was launching home his own spray of shots.

"I promise you, the Custodes will not fail…" Rossus' sentence was drowned out as the sound of jets filled the room, like screeching thunder that caused his iron bones to quiver. The confusion lasted a short time as the pillar Rossus hid behind cracked in the middle. The chainsword-wielding shape of an assault marine dressed in the enemy colours descended on him from the cloud of dust.

'How did so many get in?' Rossus thought as the Custodes stabbed the marine in the chest, breaking both of his hearts, slaying the man. As the last chunks of marble fell to finish the obliteration of the column, a second marine appeared, his whirling chainsword biting into the Custodes. He too was slain as the Custodes drew his halberd out and cleaved the Fallen's head off. He charged across the room, halberd waving, desperate to sell his life for a few more valuable kills of these, the most vile enemies Rossus had ever fought.

As Rossus held and prepared to do the same, he felt a hot pain in his side. He would have kept fighting, but found his limbs unresponsive. He crumpled to the ground, his proud career coming to an end. While Rossus lay dying, he listened to the last moments of the fight. Bolterfire continued alongside the whirring of chainswords and the shooting of a plasma weapon, the PEW was unmistakable.

Then, the fighting was over. Rossus lay, staring at the center of the room, and saw the man whom he hated the most: the Cypher himself, marching alongside sixteen assault marines and ten to twenty other marines: a veritable horde. How had they gotten in? They moved on from this now peaceful room to leave the dead be. The Emperor's throneroom was where they no doubt went.

Did Cypher look sad or was that the shadows on his face from his hood? Before Rossus could take a second look, Cypher's plasma pistol shot him between the eyes.

…

"Bastards!" Brother Kav yelled over the body of Brother Rossus.

"Calm yourself," Usoran said, "we must…" the room shook. Dust rolled off the ceiling. It was an earthquake, but few forces inside here could shake the whole palace. None, except…

"The titans!" Usoran cried, "two titans defend the Eternity Gate! They have gotten so far! We must run!" And run they did: Usoran, his battle-brothers, and no fewer than thirteen Custodes sprinted down the path of hallways they guided them to the very bosom of the Imperium.

The Eternity Gate stood in a chamber of epic proportions. The rafters were invisible by the shadows, hundreds of meters up. The pillars supporting the roof were so formidable that the whole weight of earth could be balanced upon their invincible strength. An army of banners forested the flanks of the thousand steps to the Eternity Gate. Each was raised in the honor of a magnificent Imperial hero. The Eternity Gate itself occupied the whole far wall, beneath the Imperial eagle. Upon it was shown a magnificent scene of the Emperor victorious over a horde of monsters, lance in hand. It could scarcely be believed the whole place was the work of mortal hands, for no mortal words could accurately describe it. A writer could prattle on for pages, praising the magnificence of that place, and pay it a small fraction of due homage. To fully appreciate the splendor of the chamber of the Eternity Gate, one would need to visit it as Usoran did.

When the awe of being in such a place had passed, Usoran looked to the titans that flanked the gate. Like flies, assault marines swarmed the faces of both warmachines, crawling on them, trying in vain to slice through their skins. Neither titan fired, distracted. The host of defenders ran halfway down the aisle to the gate just to get in range. Their bolters roared, desperate to strike their foes off the titans. Thus, they were distracted.

"Charge!" rising from the forest of banners, cleverly hidden Fallen charged the group, knives and swords ready. Bolterfire cut the hallowed air and soon blood was being spilt. A Dark Angel chainsword cleaved a Fallen's head from his shoulders. A Custodes halberd cleaved a man in twain, even as he emerged from the forest of banners. His corpse fell and the halberd withdrew, neither having even scratched the banners. Usoran did not pay heed to the fight though. Even as men died around him, he ran towards the gate, his superhuman legs pumping him rapidly closer, chainsword in hand. Cypher was not among the Fallen.

'The titans fired their cannons. Cypher might have gotten hit, but I fear he is too crafty for that. Meaning, he still lives.' Looking over his shoulder, Usoran spotted a scorch on the distant end of the wall: where a titan cannon had shot. No, Cypher was not hit by that. He still lived. Usoran turned to look where he was running and saw the most sickening sight he had yet seen in his whole career as a Dark Angel.

Cypher, standing in front of the Eternity Gate, his pistols holstered and the sword, the one by his waist, which he never used, out of its sheath. In one fell blow, he lacerated the Eternity Gate. The invincible gateway was too mighty to fall to such a blow, but Cypher could deliver many more. Usoran was still too far away.

"NO!" Usoran screamed, "STOP HIM!" The sound of jets hurt his ears. Looking, he saw two of the ten remaining Fallen assault marines diving on him, pistols flaring. Usoran blew them both from the sky and charged onwards. As Cypher cut again, Usoran pointed his bolter at Cypher and fired.

CLICK.

He was one hundred meters away from Cypher.

Sprinting, Usoran hurried to reload, casting aside his heavy chainsword. Never before had he done something so important. The companions, the elite of the Custodes, stood on the other side of the gate and could slay Cypher one hundred times. But a single foe of this type past the Eternity Gate was a crisis unlike anything the Imperium of Man had ever known.

He was twenty meters away from Cypher. He was almost finished reloading his bolter.

As bolterfire slashed into the surviving assault marines distracting the titans that guarded the gate, Cypher's blade cleaved into the gate again, and again. What force did the blade command? The unbreakable gate gave no resistance to each sweep and seemed to bend aside with every strike. Cypher was already able to fit himself into the rift he'd cloven. Usoran's hearts were racing while the emotion closest to fear ran through his mind. He could not fail here!

"This is for Lion El Johnson and the Emperor!" Usoran yelled just as Cypher broke through. He jumped into Cypher's back with the force of a train, driving both men through the breach in the Eternity Gate and onto the stone floor of the Emperor's throne room. Wielding his bolter in one hand, Usoran pressed the weapon into Cypher's head and fired. Squeezing the trigger, yelling with holy zeal, blood spraying into his face, Usoran did not stop shooting until the bolter's clip was dry.

Cypher was dead, limp under Usoran's weight. Letting his bolter hand to one side, Usoran lifted himself up, catching his breath, his hearts beating faster than ever. As he fell, Cypher had driven the end of his sword into the ground. The sword now lay embedded in the ground, its handle standing proudly up. Usoran took this handle to boost himself to his feet. The weight of what he was done pressed through his mind. Cypher, the worst of the Fallen, dead by his hand. Out there somewhere, there was room for a banner to him: Usoran.

He'd almost forgotten where he was

Lifting his chin, hand still on the sword, Usoran's eyes widened, his breath stolen from his body. There were no words he could think of that he could say and no thoughts that could give shape to what he was feeling. He did not blink, he did not turn his head or move his eyes, lest some of the moment go to waste. His jaw opened and he thought to pray, but had no words to say. As two of the companions walked up to him and took him by the shoulders, Usoran only found the strength to tug the sword from the floor. He took it with him as they led him out. He would have been led out backwards if they hadn't turned him around.

"Speak of nothing you saw," one of the companions commanded. He was brought outside, where the fighting had just ended. The final Fallen lay dead and it would only be a matter of time before the others were hunted down. Even now, communications in the palace were being revived.

But Usoran wasn't thinking of the Fallen. He looked over his shoulder at the gap in the gate. One of the companions already filled it, blocking even Usoran's superhuman eyes.

"Nothing you saw, understand?" Usoran could only nod to this: he was out of words. He recovered his chainsword and slung his bolter over his shoulder. He carried Cypher's sword in the other. He needed to get it identified. As the final companion turned around to return to the throne room, Usoran rejoined his victorious brothers. The titans had been freed of the assault marines and they now crunched them beneath their feet.

"Praise the Emperor, their leader is killed!" laughed Brother Thannar to Usoran as he stepped over a slain Fallen. Usoran said nothing, still in shock. He wouldn't say anything for a long time.


	20. Da Big Scrap

Armageddon; the three thousand year deadlock between ork and human. Some say the war was scarring the world spiritually. None who had ever visited it disagreed. Originally an important production world, war had destroyed its industry. Now it was a ball of rock the orks kept coming to. The Imperials fought for it merely to deny them the land. The order had been given to end the war, withdraw, and destroy the world's biosphere, but it had gotten lost in the maze of the Administratum's bureaucracy. So the Imperial Guard kept pumping men into a useless war, mindlessly following their ancestor's orders of "hold Armageddon, it is a vital, productive world."

The clouds were an endless broiling sea of ashen black, twisted with the ghostly faces of one hundred billion soldiers slain for no reason. To merely look upon those clouds without the proper preparation was to invite a restless life forever haunted by the wailing faces of the dead. Despite the Inquisition's numerous probes into the cause of the fearful trait, no explanation has ever been produced. Therefore, it came as no surprise that the Inquisition had a permanent fortress stationed there, dedicated to destroying chaotic taint.

The planet was better known for its war. In ancient days, the warboss Thrakka landed there. Some say he was guided by the gods Gork and Mork, though there was not one inquisitor who suspected, or at least wondered, if it had been one of the chaos gods instead. After, Thrakka was pursued across the galaxy, spreading his spores to other worlds, beginning his own bloodline of what the Ordo Xenos thought as "super-orks." These beasts grew to be mighty warbosses who worked with one another. Thus, the ork race received a grand unity over three-thousand years. And with unity came a greater intensity in the Waaaagh!!!

"WAAAAGH!!!" howled an unearthly voice as the rok crashed into Imperial trenches outside the ruins of Helsreach Hive, now a blackened forest of spires rising out of an equally blackened landscape. The whole of the visible landscape was overcome with loose ash dunes that were wearying to walk through. Every few meters was broken by a wrecked hulk of some vehicle of war. It was a cloud of this landscape that was thrown into the air as the rok hit, burying men alive under meters of ash.

Swarming through the cloudy trenches, hundreds of thousands of gas masked warriors readied their weapons. Tanks rolled into position, forming cavalry lines built to break the charge of green that would come. Men surrounded the rok in rings, each successive ring made of countless thousands of bodies. To these faceless dregs, the rok was nothing more than a black mountain looming out of a cloud of ash. Only a few could see the mighty glyphs hanging from the rok. Some bore images of orks with daemonic heads alongside giant representations of orkish clan symbols. The bull head of the Goffs glared out at the trembling lines.

"Fire!" Logan bellowed.

As one, imperial artillery batteries stationed along the trench line and amidst the sturdier piles of Helsreach debris flared up, spitting and coughing hundreds of screaming shells upon the mountain of rock. Flaring, leaping, a burning display of orange flame leapt up from one dozen points along the rok's skin. Some shells were turned aside by orkish shields but most found a landing against the rok itself. But upon a mountain of this size, it was as useless as clubbing a lump of clay. They could dent it, but not collapse it. Logan could not do so without destroying himself, the Imperial Guard, and his company of Space Wolves. As he stood up on his Land Raider, wind blowing through the warrior god's hair, axe raised, he threw a howl to the air. With the sight of orkish rok burning under Imperial shells above them and the Astartes howls in their ears, even the veterans felt a chill of fear.

As the dust began to clear, the air grew denser and denser with the mad cries of rampaging orks. They could be heard over the Imperial guns. The air felt hot and looking in the direction of the orks began to hurt Logan's eyes. There were so, so, many orks. Squinting at the base of the distant rok, a number of miles away, Logan could see the orkish mob was leaving the rok, spilling out, an emerald coloured ale coming forth from a barrel that had lost its bottom half. And their eyes glowing red! It was like a sea of fire was lighting up the black landscape.

"My lord, front elements engaged," said one officer of the guard to Logan, listening to his vox caster.

"My lord, tanks are beginning their charge."

"My lord, artillery is retasking and letting fly on the aliens."

"Do not tell me another word!" Logan bellowed to the Imperial officers around him, "do you duty and the Emperor will be happy." He turned to the warriors around him: the grey-armored great company. "Their warboss will lead the charge. Strike at the heart and slay their leader!" As one, they howled again. Embarking into their rhinos and land raiders, the space wolves prepared to charge, snarling, into the heart of the ork swarm. With a greasy bark from their tank's engines, the whole line of fifteen transports raced forward across a corridor of unoccupied space through Imperial lines. They passed dozens of trenches and support trenches, past whole regiments of guardsmen who cheered with their passing, into the orkish mob. It wasn't long before the ancient tanks had raced them into the enemy lines.

The orks were coming across at the ring that surrounded their rok in a disorganized mess of infantry and fast-moving buggies and bikes, the largest were the size of a house to carry their gigantic crew. Imperial artillery broke these crude vehicles asunder. Flaming fuel leapt from the cartwheeling ruin of their trukks, lighting the flesh of those orks nearest to them. Shells showered the landscape with a solid downpour of blood and gunmetal. Thousands of Imperial machine guns and las weaponry scythed into the horde, blowing chunks off the larger orks and felling the smaller ones. The tide of aliens stomped over their own dead on the warpath into the human lines, waving axes and shooting bullets big enough to be used to beat a human to death. Guardsmen were ripped in half by these shots when the mob was close enough. That was the cue.

As the space marines raced ahead of the guardsmen and filled the no-man's land between the endless horde and the trenches, the tanks of the guards roared forward to join them, guns thundering, filling the largest orks with shots until even they surrendered to their wounds and fell to the ground with a loud thud.

"My lord, we have the warboss sighted. He leads the charge," said the driver of Logan's land raider.

"Drive him over!" Logan roared, brandishing his axe and preparing to leap out. He could hear loud thumps as ork bodies were crushed by the treads. Through the armored skin, he could hear the crackling of Space Wolf bolters. "Kill the orks! Wherever they are found!" Logan roared to his assembled squad of bulky terminators, "when this gate goes down, I demand that each of you slay one hundred of the beasts!" The gate lowered as he spoke.

"We're immobilized," complained the driver. Logan didn't hear him as he barreled outside. His axe rose and chomped into the helmet of the ork he met outside the tank. Most orks were as big as he was, but this one was an example what the orks called the "bit boyz," a mere 6 and a-half feet tall. Running, Logan brought his axe around and hit it home against an orkish neck, taking the head off another bit boy. Dissatisfied, he rose his storm bolter and took off the face of a worthy opponent: a fourteen foot nob.

Around him, the terminators were setting into the beasts with their power fists and storm bolters, cutting a bloody swathe through the oncoming rain of green aliens. Though Logan's demand of one hundred had seemed demanding, they were making good of their orders. Everywhere the four men went, orks died, cut up into jagged, sopping wet corpses either by legendary Astartes strength or by bullets. Metal plating split like thunder under power fists. Swiftly, a mound of green bodies built up around the land raider.

Logan broke a bit boy over his knee with one hand and blasted a flurry of bolts into the face of a larger one with the other, then formed up with the rest of his squad, back to back, guns blazing, looking for the boss pole of the warboss that commanded here. Many orks challenged them, running up meters of lumpy dead flesh to reach the marines, but they were ripped off their feet in a bright spray of gut and broken bone, only adding to the heap. All the while Logan's armor held firm against the wasp swarm of bullets that flew his way from orkish guns. His return fire killed scores with every sweeping motion as every bolt fired hit flesh or tore through armor.

"My lord!" warned a terminator, pointing. Looking, Logan realized why the land raider had gone immobile. Standing atop it was as monstrous a warboss as he'd ever seen. Logan didn't have an exact estimate, but noted that it held the turret of a leman russ in one powerklaw. Its chiseled green head glared out from a break in its mega armor from beneath a helmet that wore a pair of horns. Upon his back rested a bosspole rudely decorated with the helmets of space marines from two chapters, including his own. From the red ruin of the hatch gunner and the blood on the turret, this abomination had been using the piece of tank as a club. Just looking at it brought its stink to Logan's nose.

"Two, three! Fire!" Logan yelled. Himself and two of his terminators fired savagely at the monster. Blood leapt from its brow and sparks sprayed out from its black armored body, but the ork giant was unhurt. He instead bounded down from the wrecked land raider and swung the turret. Logan leapt down from the mound.

"WAAAAGH!!!" the warboss roared. Logan's ears hurt as he regained his balance in time to see the warboss discard the chunk of leman russ and slash into the terminator he'd knocked over with it. Logan was briefly distracted to chop down a pair of orks lunging at him, before barreling at the warboss. He could see the ork rip the terminator's belly open and pull his guts out into the air in front of him. The remaining terminators were swamped by orks as they fell back, slowly drowning in the green sea.

"WAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!" The ork had killed the terminator but was still screaming at the sky. "AAAAAHHHH!!!" Its madness was overwhelming it. Taking a swing, Logan's axe chopped into the monster's back, cutting a shallow blow. The beast threw him back with a turn of its monstrous torso, slamming him painfully against the land raider. Logan distanced himself from the familiar wring of pain and readied his axe as the warboss turned around. Was the ork convulsing? Logan looked into the ork's red eyes. They were growing brighter and hotter until Logan had to squint. "WAAAGH!!!" Logan was about to run forward, but the warboss exploded, not merely bursting apart, but going off like a basilisk round. Flames leapt up from the warboss' form, high into the sky. Logan was thrown back into the land raider's compartment, his beard singed by flames. As he looked up, he beheld nothing of the warboss remained except for a pair of armored feet, which blazed like twin funerary pyres.

...

The battle was far off. Quite frankly, Runepriest Jarl couldn't care less about it right now. As he gazed down through the candlelight in his personal chamber, a round room located in the city-sized underground bunkers of the Steel Legion. Normally a closet, it had been converted to personal-sized shrine to the Emperor. A rug lay open across the rockcrete floor, its brown-furred skin painted with the runes of Russ. Incense from Fenris spiced the gentle, soundless air. The closed door sealed him from the world beyond.

"Yes, Leman Russ, I understand," Jarl whispered to the emptiness, "Jormungand is here. The Great Wolf shall be informed." He bent down and kissed the rug's wolf head. "Thank you. And when Ragnarok descends, we shall be steeled against it." Jarl took a moment to understand what he had learned. If the serpent of chaos was here, then the Space Wolves would have the chaos they were searching for. They could turn from fighting orks and leave it to Armstrong. At last, Leman Russ' true enemies could be battled.

Then, Jarl felt a pair of twisting coils take his wrists. He tried to rise, but he felt his ankles and waist immobile. Looking to his hands, he glumly acknowledged the pair of metallic snakes wrapping around them, holding even his Astartes strength at bay. He turned over his shoulder as he located the source.

Behind him were a trio of Alpha Legion warriors. Two were helmeted and faceless, but the third wore only a respirator on his face, showing his cruel eyes. He was source of the cybernetic serpents: nine of them reached out from his left arm. Each snake was many meters long, with moving jaws, and long teeth.

"You're alone," the one of the helmeted traitors laughed. "Lost old you, and Logan is somewhere, taking souls." Jarl built up his powers. If these marines intended to interrogate him, they would die first.

"Never leave the pack," added the helmetless one. Before Jarl could kill the marine, one of the spare serpents was lunging at him, jaws open. It was the last thing he saw.

…

Inquisitor Rarend stepped onto the landing platform. In the clear night sky above his head, hanging in the rolling black sky and the endless veil of bright stars. It had been in this world's sky where he had seen the retreating ultramarines. Momentarily, he thought about what Afennor had said.

'So they made it out,' he thought, 'my henchmen made it out of that eldar attack alive.' He felt almost bad for abandoning them so shamelessly. They had been his trusted companions, caring about him enough to seek aid from the Ultramarines when he was in danger. Now they would be tarnished with his name: like a tumor on healthy flesh, marring and destroying by association. Every man who had ever worked with or for Rarend was now under investigation no doubt. And why? Because he had trusted the eldar. Rarend looked down at Project Gaia in his hand. Above him, the only people who could have known what it was, disappeared.

'At least I made it to this world,' Rarend thought, 'at least this world is still here.' As landing crew clustered around him, moths attracted to light, Rarend looked about and concealed the stolen artifact in his clothes. The damage the eldar had made him inflict would be healed, somehow. When the time came to use Project Gaia, he would use it. He'd know when the moment was upon him. Until then, he could only hide from his former loyalties, fold himself into the shadows between the stars. His home would be the quiet void. But he would always watch and wait.

"In the name of the Inquisition!" Rarend said for the last time, "I am occupying one of your ships!" the landing crew, to whom the news of Mars' destruction had not yet reached, scrambled to comply with his sharply spoken demand.

Within an hour, the night was racing up to meet him. The lights of the world the Ultramarines dropped him on became a glowing yellow sea beneath the little freighter he had occupied. Mindless servitors manned the controls, a servile navigator oversaw their warp travel. These and no others kept the inquisitor company.

Rarend forsook his title as inquisitor at that point and vowed never again to speak of them. As Maiagnar grew to a blue dot in their wake, Rarend patted Project Gaia under his robe.

…

"WHAT!" Armstrong yelled over the static of the vox-set he crouched by, "what could you possibly want now?" In the cramped quarters of the control room, with the holodisplay of Armegeddeon out in front of him, Governor Militant Armstrong had little area to gesture violently in. Despite his apparent frail appearance, thin voice, and crippling scars, the man earned his white uniform with a chest covered in medals. He spoke with the fire of a preacher and the weight of an inquisitor. His temper was volatile if anything. Pushing his way past the lord commissar and three scribes in the control room, he approached the messenger. "What coud you possibly want?"

"The Space Wolves report a rok, sir…" the messenger began, his thin young face staring stupidly at the ancient figure, hardened by sixty years of fighting orks.

"By Yarricks hat, not another one!" Armstrong cried. "Leave that loudmouth Logan to drive over it. I'm trying to hold onto the Fire Wastes AGAIN." He returned to the holodisplay. "Now listen!" he said to the holographic image of General Jukas' face, "I don't care about Beckinhyne Ridge, its not much good to us and it can be outflanked. What's more, you didn't secure it like you report. You've just contested the place. All my reports say the damn place is half to hell with orks. Congragulations Jukas, you just sacrificed 500 000 men to create a little white question mark on my map display here." He flicked a button on the controls and made the face vanish.

Looking up, Armstrong scratched his long white beard in consideration. The orks had been particularly large this year. The numbers of warbosses had tripled, with each one bringing millions more greenskins with them. He'd known since he was ten that he wouldn't live to see the war won, by he'd sooner let an ork into Terra than be the man who let the orks take Armegeddeon.

Over the commotion of the control room, he heard another man speak up.

"Sir? Governor Militant?" This was no messenger. Though Armstrong's tone didn't grow blunt, he didn't dare talk back to this man. He wore a simple ceremonial outfit consisting of a red robe and a tall hat. On his breast: the symbol of the Inquisition. "The Inquisitorial fortress is overdue on its report." Armstrong had the man's answer.

"Your fortress is part of the underground bunker complex around Helsreach, right?" asked Armstrong. He didn't like to call It a fortress. The name conjured images of a tall castle. This place was an underground vault from which the Inquisition searched HIS world for Chaos. "I have your answer: a rok just dropped near it. The bunker complex was emptied totally to fight the orks off. The Space Wolves should reconstruct contact…"

"I demand a survey sent to determine the cause," stammered the man. Armstrong let his temper go.

"Do you know why the ash dunes on Armegeddon are so big?" asked Armstrong, "it is because, after three thousand years of war, the burnt, rotten bodies of hundreds of billions of Imperial guardsmen and orks have turned to dust. Where battles go on, dunes grow from their ashen remains. Those dunes have buried small towns. The Impeiral Guard have fought for this planet for three thousand years, long enough for their bodies to become a geographical feature!" Armstrong paused to catch his breath. "What makes you think they'll stop fighting now to do a little survey? I'm sorry, but my men are too busy building ash dunes to care." Armstrong turned to the holodisplay without a word.

And he beheld, superimposed over the hologram, an unfamiliar face in a winged helm of alien design.

"Greetings Governor Militant," the head said, looking directly at Armstrong. The whole room convulsed in surprise and some fear. "I would recommend you do as the man tell you, fate would favor it." The room, once abuzz with words but now silent save for the crackling of vox-sets, focused on the unfamiliar head.

"How did you hack my…" began Armstrong, knowing better than to get mad at a hologram.

"We have entered your primitive machinery through a unique art of our own. Let it only be known that you are in grave danger from Chaos. The Alpha Legion itself strikes at your heart. They seek to hasten the rise of the Despoiler. You must trust us," the head said in urgency. Its wise voice sounded unnatural, speaking quickly.

"You're an eldar," Armstrong said in realization.

"I am an autarch of Biel-Tan, yes, and an officer to the Phoenix Lords," the head said. "One of my esteemed masters goes in your direction now: Baharoth. He will explain to you your problem and how chaos may be defeated here."

"What exactly do you want from me?" demanded Armstrong. "Why should I believe a word you liars tell me?"

"The Alpha Legion is attacking the Inquisitorial fortress near Helsreach. Soon, they will move on the Astartes. By next week, another traitor legion, we don't know which one, will come to Armageddeon," the autarch warned. Armstrong crossed his thin arms and his wrinkled brow creased. "This world soon be the center of a huge warp rift," the autarch continued.

"I suppose this has to do with those mad rumors of a raid by the chaos gods on Terra," Armstrong laughed. The autarch shook his head.

"Not rumors, fate."

"I don't believe in fate. If chaos sticks its ugly face onto our world we'll shoot it off. If you come here, we'll shoot you off too," Armstrong shouted, now finding his temper difficult to control.

"So be it. But to those of you willing to listen, men of the Imperium, warn the Space Wolves that we come to join them. Know also that there is something about the orks you don't fully understand, for it shall be they who cause the rift, and from it, the end of the Imperium." With that, the face vanished. Armstrong looked at the man from the inquisiton, who seemed smaller as he cowered against the wall.

"Send the message," he said, "in the name of the Inquisition, warn the Space Wolves!"

"You know everything that eldar said was a lie? Armstrong insisted as the room broke into commotion again. When the stubborn inquisitorial minion said nothing, Armstrong shrugged. "Deal with the eldar however you like. Just keep me out of it."

…

Odeen of the Space Wolves howled with savage glee as he killed the Emperor's enemies. His bolt pistol shouted in the faces of orks far bigger than he, turning their faces to bony red ruin and popping their red eyes. With a whelling blow, his ancient axe split the face of a howling greenskin lengthwise, spilling the things vile brains out of its face.

"Odeen?" beeped his earpiece, "the commandpost has detected a faint energy signature coming from inside the rok. Investigate when you can." Odeen smiled, showing pointed teeth through his long beard. To reach the rok, he had easily ten thousand orks to chop through. Tanks and guardsmen were drawing the horde outwards, but the Space Wolves would have a long way to go to break their way past this horde.

"Your demands are impossible as of now!" shouted Odeen into the earpiece as he and a fellow marine fought against one of the orks in bulky powered armor, "but we shall do what we can." The other Space Wolf reached in with his head and bit the ork on the thoat. The ork fell backwards, crushing two bit boys under it. The feral Astartes continued to ravage the alien monster with his teeth, while blasting blindly away into the mob with his bolter. Odeen felt his back shudder while shots glanced off it. He turned around, swinging his axe to decapitate another ork, and returned fire, senting an explosive bolt through the offender's cybernetic eye and into its brain.

An explosion, one of many now blossoming through the horde, threw Odeen off his feet. He landed painfully against the ground after being thrown some distance. His head hurt and he grasped in vain for his bolt pistol, which he'd lost in the blast. What he first took to be rain turned out to be the pulped remains of ork flesh. Odeen stood back up and wiped the blood from his face. Another explosion rocked the combat, but far larger than any that had come before. A wall of explosive fire leapt up in the middle of the orkish mob, oily and spectacular, dancing in celebration at the spectacle of death around it. In the air, the jet-shriek of an engine broke the air. The combat stopped momentarily as all eyes turned skyward.

'Praise the Emperor,' thought Odeen as the blue shapes of Ultramarine drop pods broke through the canopy of unnatural clouds, ducking and weaving among them were a pair of thunderhawks. A second salvo of missiles descended on the battle, turning massive swathes of the green sea into a garden of fire. The ground shook when the drop pods hit the ground, landing near the Space Wolves. The deadly twin eagles of the thunderhawks circled gracefully around to deliver another crushing bombardment to the horde.

Dashing over to the nearest drop pod, Odeen beheld four Ultramarines with bolters firing into the orkish heart. They were good killers, felling greeskins each second, but Odeen disliked the way they stood in the open around the drop pod rather than using it as cover. When they struggled to reload, a wave of orks fell on them, axes in hand. One of them was felled while the other three fell back.

"You shall not be alone!" Odeen roared, barreling through the fray, killing four orks on the way, and striking into the greenskins that attacked his brothers from another chapter. His axe chopped into an orkish back, severing its spine. He snatched its massive axe from it before it could be swung at an Ultramarine and whipped it into the face of a second. The greenskins turned to confront him instead, but were chopped down by Ultramarine bolters. The three survivors hurried to liberate their fallen comrade's body.

"I am Odeen. You can think of me as a captain." These students of the Codex Astartes could not hope to understand the Space Wolves and their unusual makeup. "One thousand ork skulls for your fallen brother." He did not stop chopping orks down as he spoke, parrying even as he said "ork skulls."

"And so shall it be. We are here with the Black Tomb and bring news of much importance," one of the Ultramaines said, fumbling with his bolter. "Chaos comes through this world."

"Pardon?" Odeen chopped an ork head from its shoulders. The world shook again as another wall of flame blossomed up from the middle of the horde. Odeen was noticing the green tide was finally abating. Targets were fewer and further between. He was even seeing a few guardsmen, pushing against the mob, pressing the horde back. Odeen took a moment to rest. He'd need to find his pistol.

"I said there is news from Terra," the Ultramarine repeated, "a warp storm will blossom here and from it, Abaddon the Depoiler will come forth." Odeen then thought of the energy reading insdie the rok. Could it be?

"Show me to the Black Tomb," Odeen asked as a leman russ and a company of guardsmen rushed past him, lasguns spitting at the greenskins, dragging them down one at a time. The thunderhawks dropped yet more bombs into the mob. "I have been given an assigment."


	21. Hydra Dominatus

Opening the door to the bunker, Afennor slid his night-vision goggles on. Stepping off the thunderhawk with his nine squad mates, most of them as young as Afennor and only a few years into their careers as scouts. They walked into the chute that led into the depths of the bunker, Afennor's orders rung freshly in his ears.

"This bunker is empty, everyone in it is fighting the orks. Inside it, there is an inquisitorial outpost that has gone silent. Discover the reasons." Those words echoed through Afennor's brain over and over again while he patted his bolter and walked through the unlit hallways of the bunker, everything appearing to him as clear as day through the goggles. He couldn't wait until the day when his eyes would be sharp enough to penetrate all shadow.

"We are three hundred meters away," said the squad leader, one hour, nineteen corridors and five elevators later. So far, this mission had been an uneventful one. Randorse had even taken to popping jokes the way he usually did when the boredom got to them.

"Wouldn't you rather be dropping orks right now?" asked Randorse. "The game here is said to be bigger than the greenskins we shot up on Sepress Prime." Afennor shuddered at memories of that world. Randorse wasn't there when Afennor's land speeder storm was shot down and he was stuck for three days underneath it, waiting for evacuation. From under his hiding place, Afennor's sniper rifle had taken a fearsome toll on the convoys that passed by. It was a good thing they never thought to look for him on the cliffs over their heads. Were he a battle brother, he'd have won a badge for all the high-ranking orks he shot.

'All I've got here is a bolter,' Afennor thought sourly. 'Give me a sniper rifle and I'll kill whatever orks have gotten down here.' This was only bravado. The cramped hallways made a poor sniper's playground.

"We're almost there," Sasal whispered, "any readings?"

"Sensors confirm there are no xeno spores in the air. If there's orks around, they're not shedding."

"Or they haven't been here." The scouts softly began to debate amongst themselves, deciding if an ork spore would drift through the windless hallways they patrolled until the squad leader hushed them.

"Its in front of us," the senior scout whispered. "Right…" they turned a corner. "There." The scouts froze. In front of them was an iron gate, built into the stone wall. Emblazoned upon it was the symbol of the holy Inquisition, but it was defaced with the runes of Chaos undivided. A few scouts spat at the runes.

"Reconnaissance squad: we've located the entrance. Chaos has been here. We are establishing a perimeter," said their leader. "Mailan, Northfor, cover the east hallway. Giles, Afennor, Sasal, and Randorse, cover out rear. Everyone else, watch the gate." The scouts hurried to their assigned places. The gate had only two halls leading to it and a brief inspection of the rafters revealed nothing waiting. Afennor watched the hallways and lay secure in the knowledge that soon the battle with the orks would be over and the true muscle of the Ultramarines would be here.

'Necrons, orks, tyranids: will chaos be anything like them?' Afennor thought. With those three alien races destroying everything, it seemed hard to fathom that chaos was the greatest threat to the Imperium. Afennor had never battled chaos but every marine he'd ever spoken to had on at least two occasions. One thing they forced the scouts to accept was that they would have to come toe-to-toe with the ruinous powers sooner or later. 'I've waited for a day like this for so long. Now it's finally happening. How will I handle it?' As time passed, and boredom increased, Afennor's answer came. 'I'm handling it pretty well.' He looked at Giles, scarred and coming close to the end of his time as a scout, the most senior in his small group, who had been with the Black Tomb when Afennor has still been a slave to the inquisitorial henchmen. Sasal, short and tough, who Afennor had pulled behind a tree when they'd come under fire on Spress Prime. Good old Randorse, whose sarcasm never left him, even when the whole Ultramarines chapter fought for its life against a tyranid swarm.

"Maybe we'll rebuild our chapter when we get assimilated into the hive fleet and fight on from there?" he suggested as the final wave of creatures came. Even their company captain found that funny.

"Are they going to attack us or not?" asked Randorse nervously as they watched the halls.

"Do not pray for the coming of chaos," scolded Giles, looking behind him at the gate.

"I should think they'd want to kill us. Or maybe they're still inside?" Randorse asked. "Can't we just storm in there and kill all this waiting?"

"We've got to contain them until our brothers can arrive. Learn from this lesson, boy." Randorse grumbled.

"Well, if they do decide they want to kill us, Afennor, don't try hiding behind me. I honestly hate it when you do that."

"I've got to hide behind something," Afennor muttered.

"You two, silence!" hissed the squad leader.

"Sorry," whispered the two.

"No, silence. Can you hear that?" Afennor held his breath and listened.

THUMP THUMP THUMP! The rhythmic footfalls of approaching feet echoed into his ears from far away. He whispered a short prayer and squinted down the hall, from where the steps came from. He felt his jaw tighten. This was it! If a servant of chaos approached, Afennor would finally live the day he had been promise: a chance to battle the ruinous…

With a thunderclap, the gate to the fortress exploded open, showering sparks through the halls. The scouts watching the gate leapt back and fired their bolters into the smoke that arose. Splitting from the haze came a cruel voice:

"Hydra Dominatus!" A horned giant stepped into the hole, his armor was green with grey trim, his helmet an older pattern now worn only by… Afennor's whole body tightened and he choked back a scream. His first battle against chaos and he was fighting…the Alpha Legion? Before he could shoot. He heard bolts flying in his direction. Beside him, he saw a dark red spray of bone and blood jump from Giles' head as he too turned about to the gate. They were being attacked from behind too!

Afennor and the two survivors jumped into the room…with the Alpha Legion traitor… and unloaded bolts at the man. Sparks leapt from the giant's armor as he slid into the smoke. Screaming with fury, young Ghilo gave chase, firing, disappearing into the smoke. The squad leader didn't tell him to stop: the squad leader was spayed against the opposite wall. Afennor could only crouch and listen as Ghilo yelled and fired. Then, the whirling of a chainsword. Ghilo stopped firing and instead shrieked in pain, crying so painfully that Afennor felt himself shiver. The sound was mercifully short.

"Should we watch the hallway we were supposed to or the gate?" whispered Randorse. The other members of Afennor's squad were now in the room, crouching against the walls. Now, nobody watched a single hall. Afennor heard someone whisper for help into their vox-caster.

"Emperor….Ghiles and Gilo," whispered Sasal.

Then, whipping out from the smoke and into the room, came a grenade, flopping into the middle. Northfor leapt up and dove towards the grenade, intending to throw it back in. His head exploded in a hail of bolterfire from an unknown direction before he could, though his body fell onto it. Afennor shut his eyes when the explosion sounded. Then…

"Hydra Dominatus!" from each of the hallways came a pair of Alpha Legion traitors, bolters in hand. From the smoke came five more, two armed with bolt pistols and chain swords and a single helmetless man who was the clear leader. His head was totally hairless, his cheeks, mouth and nose hidden by a respirator mask, his green armor was as beautiful as it was terrible. The scale design looked real. In one hand a bolter, in the other hand, nothing. Tethered to his left wrist was a nest of cybernetic serpents that lashed out to bite men at the other end of the room.

"AH!" Randorse choked as a snake whipped around his neck and dragged him over to the traitor lord. Three razor-toothed snakes snapped their jaws hungrily at the young scout.

Hiding in the corner, Afennor clicked his bolter. He was out of ammunition. Discarding it, he slipped through the combat, unnoticed by the sinister warriors as they effortlessly carved apart the defenseless scouts. Afennor caught a fleeting glimpse of Randorse, lying on the floor with his guts exposed, his shrieking louder than any of the other noises in the room, as the mechanical serpents sorted through his organs and harvested the ones the Astartes had put there. Afennor felt something impact against his side and his left flank went numb. He stumbled and fell, perhaps appearing dead, then jumped back up and running down the hall some more. It took him a while to comprehend that he'd been shot. Branded into his mind was the face of the lord he'd seen, behind the respirator mask he'd worn, the sadism in his eyes as he killed Randorse.

'I will return,' Afennor thought with a gasp. 'I will return with my whole chapter. And I will kill that man. By the Emperor, I promise it.'

…

Vashuss stepped over to the next body and saw that this scout too was alive. He planted a green boot onto the scout's surviving arm, crushing the shoulder. Using his cybernetic implants in his fingers, he commanded his serpents to begin. The moved down to the scout's torso, which was unharmed, and began splitting his belly. The scout wailed as blood began to spill forth from his Ultramarine armor, renewing the coat of blood across his serpents' heads. They burrowed into the wound and pulled aside, ripping flesh, armor, and bone, revealing the man's ropy intestines. His snakes began to sort through them.

"Two injuries, my lord," reported Slaesh. "No deaths."

"Of course not. These were only scouts, Let the one that got away escape. His news of us will prompt action," Vashuss mumbled over the scout's screaming, snipping off a choice bit of meat from the scout's body and passing it up to himself. "Tell the cells to evacuate."

"What shall I tell them my lord?"

"The Ultramarines will fall over themselves to get back in here when the survivor makes his report. They mustn't find us. This Inquisitorial facility is destroyed. Now the Inquisition won't be able to detect the warp energies. The rift can open unopposed." He looked up at Slaesh as the serpents moved up to the scout's chest. The cracking of rips accompanied Vashuss' words. "Are the charges set?"

"Yes my lord."

"Then withdraw through the tunnels." Vashuss thought about the old Helsreach tunnel that ran close to these bunkers. They'd burrowed in from there. "Do you have your second heart yet?" he asked the scout. There was no use: the man wasn't speaking. Vashuss would just have to find out himself.

Then, Vashuss felt a signal come from his communicator. Raising his right wrist, he looked at the little display screen. An ancient code, dating back to the ancient days on Holy Terra before mankind had set foot on the moon. He read the code.

"Slaesh!" Vashuss shouted as the Alpha Legion warriors disappeared down the halls, "another chaos legion is coming to join us. From a warp rift inside the rok outside."

"What? Impossible. The chaotic energy isn't strong enough to open the rift. Not yet at least," replied Slaesh. Vashuss shook his head.

"This isn't the big rift, merely a smaller…prelude," Vashuss cursed. "Damnation, it's being summoned. There's someone else already here. If the Imperials detect this rift, they'll send forces here to meddle with the rift's opening." He cursed.

"Then it will be a battle for the rok," said Slaesh, "when the rift is large enough it will allow our forces to join us. The orks will help the rift grow once its reached a certain size."

"This plan is more risky than what I had in mind," Vashuss replied, contemplating his options. "Granted, this one takes less time." He had no choice. "A battle for the rok then it will be. You know which heads we use in wars of attrition." Slaesh nodded.

"Head four, head eight, all of you, converge on the ork rok and defend it," Slaesh ordered.

…

"There's a what near Helsreach?" Armstrong cursed as he looked at the holodisplay. "We may need to withdraw our command post. If chaos is on this planet, we cannot let it taint us." The messenger shrugged.

"It is only a foiregn energy signature. Its source is hard to…"

"The Space Wolves have been rambling on about chaos for too long. This is more than coincidence," Armstrong said, his tone steady, his words certain. "And it has been too long since I have commanded from a starship. I need to get out of…here," the Governor Militant gestured to his room. He turned to his comms officer. "Contact the astropaths. Send out warnings to all nearby systems. Possible chaos incursion. Need aid." As he stepped across his command room, Armstrong came to the inevitable realization. The eldar was right.

…

Back, back, the orks were pushed against the rok. They howled defiantly against the press of the Imperial Guard and two chapters of the Space Marines, but to no avail. Stumbling over the bodies of their own, their backs were nearly against the stone of their rok. But as these ones died, elsewhere, in one million other battlefields, their forces prevailed. Untold trillions of orks would yet live even if they all died here.

'Such pests, the Emperor cannot live in peace while they still breathe,' the Black Tomb thought while his fist crushed an ork skull. He fondly recalled the days when orks were smaller and easier to kill, when their eyes didn't glow so intensely. When their warcries were not so impossibly loud. His assault cannon spat death into the tight mobs.

Then, there was a white flash in the orkish crowd, ripping many greenskins apart. The thunderhawks had landed, so it was not they. The Black Tomb understood there was only one race that had guns like that.

Diving down, like shards of flying glass and equally sharp, three eldar craft dove, lasers blazing death into the aliens. From their underbellies jumped a handful of winged warriors. Like snow, they fluttered down, rifles claiming scores of orks before they touched down. The Black Tomb had fought both beside and against eldar. Today, it seemed he would fight alongside them. He remained weary as the leader dropped next to him, into the middle of a squad of space marines and a regiment of Imperial Guard.

'A Phoenix Lord?' thought the Black Tomb in surprise and some awe. From the wings and the feathered helm, the dreadnought recognized Barahrroth, the swooping hawk. At last, they met.

"What is the meaning of this?" demanded the Black Tomb as his men pushed ahead of him, taking his place in the fighting.

"You're in danger, you all are, Calgar," Barahrroth warned ominously, gesturing with a sky-blue hand at the Utramarines and guardsmen. "This world will soon be the eye of a warp storm. You must withdraw and battle chaos in space."

"Give your reasons, eldar," the Black Tomb replied, knowing better than to disregard an eldar, though remaining weary.

"Our suspicions are confirmed. At long last, our suspicions are confirmed. When the necrons awoke, the orks rose into the galaxy to fight them: the final spark needed to heat their Waaagh to the needed levels. The united Waaagh has given the orks their strength, and here, upon Armageddon, where both Angron and Thrakka once tread, it will be there downfall." The Black Tomb took a moment to process the enigmatic words. The Phoenix Lord continued. "The orks have been getting stronger for the past three thousand years, ever since the descendants of Thrakka united them. Now they are perfect. You can destroy this rok, and the next, but for every Astartes you field, the orks have a fleet of roks at their disposal."

"Is that why you are here?" the Black Tomb asked, "to tell us what we know? I watched the orks get larger, I have seen their wars grow in size and intensity…"

"But you did not see what it meant, for the universe," Barahrroth interrupted. "The red in their eyes? Their unnaturally loud yells?"

"Side affects of having a stronger Waaagh," the Black Tomb affirmed.

"Yes. And now that they span the galaxy. Now that they have stopped fighting one another, they are more powerful than ever, united, their ferocity feeding the warp with raw hatred. The pure, hot energy from their rage is uniting here, on Armageddeon, a world tainted by Angron's footsteps. And thus the energy of orkish rage collects here on this Khorne-tainted world." He pointed at the screaming clouds. "Very soon that energy will create a…" the eldar paused. "I'm not sure what. Whatever it is that happens, there will be a shockwave that will open a warp storm while destroying the orks just as they reach the pinnacle of their civilization." The Black Tomb was spellbound at Barahrroth leaned into him. "The same thing that happened to us is happening to them, but with war, not pleasure."

…

Breaking his way through the sheet-metal door, Vashuss beheld his target. Upon the bloody floor, above the broken skull of an ork psyker, was a shimmering red ball of mist: the crack in reality that his men had sensed. Around it was a coven of Thousand Sons sorcerers, chanting in whispers, feeding the rift.

"Who commands here?" demanded Vashuss, stepping inside. "Answer in the name of the Depoiler." Startled, the leader of the coven fired a bolt at Vashuss, striking him in the chest, but glancing off harmlessly. The shot did not even shake him.

"Do not come in unannounced," one of the sorcerers scolded.

Turning from the group, and swathed in splendid armor, smoking bolt pistol raised, the lead sorcerer approached. It was Ahriman himself, gold and blue, thousands of years of knowledge condensed into one menacing figure whose words could undo nations. Vashuss narrowed his eyes as the Thousand Son warrior approached him and his escort of three: the only force small enough to fit inside the pod that he had used to burrow under the battle and into the empty rok. Vashuss fingered his cracked armor where Ahriman had shot.

"That's all you get, sorcerer" he warned the Thousand Son. "You shall not be forgiven next time." Ahriman chuckled from behind his gold faceplate. "How did you reach this place?" Vashuss asked, his tight voice growing slack. Ahriman lowered his evil firearm.

"We occupied this asteroid before the greenskins used it. Chaos showed us the fate the orks had for this broken rock. We needed only hide," Ahriman hissed. "Come, witness the favored of the Lord of Change as they bring about the fall of the Imperium of weaklings." Vashuss narrowed his eyes.

"The orks make war on the necrons all across the galaxy as the tyranids retreat. Very soon, there will be enough raw rage collected here to open a warp storm in an instant. I need only hide the risk from Imperial eyes" Vashuss explained. "Why do you risk it so brazenly? My way is slower but foolproof."

"Tzeench demands speed," Ahriman whispered, then he turned to the rift.

"What is the real reason, sorcerer?" Vashuss smiled: nobody could lie to him.

"In this time, when nobody plots and plans, but dies and whithers the realm of Tzeench is…" Ahriman didn't say a word past that. "All haste must be had. The Imperium must die now, swiftly, not slowly as you would have it."

"Your god is dying, isn't he? He's sitting on his throne deep in his endless maze and sleeping, isn't he?" Ahriman turned to Vashuss and pointed his staff aggressively at him.

"Do not blaspheme against He Who Knows All. I was alive when your Primach drew breath." Ahriman turned to the rift. "You know as well as I do that this rift will be like a spark and the alien's rage like gunpowder. The orks can be exterminated by their own rage right now, if we only coax it. The warp storm will be here right now, if we only coax it." Vashuss stepped up next to him.

"The Imperials might virus bomb Armageddeon, or destroy this rok. Your way involves more bloodshed than is needed," Vashuss noted lazily. "If we fail here, it might be a great while before the warp storm blossoms if the Imperials understand the danger we pose."

"So we will not fail here, by Tzeench," Ahriman rasped, "my spark will ignite the storm, by Tzeench." Vashuss watched as the orb, now his own size, shifted. "The first defenders are here!" Ahriman cackled, "in the name of the Despoiler, hold the rok!" Vashuss turned to his troops behind him.

"In the name of the Depoiler, hold this chamber!" he commnded, "chaos demands it!" The rift shuddered, and something emerged.

…

Odeen reached the base of the monstrous rok. Looking up it, he could scarcely see the shrieking faces in Armegeddeon's famous clouds behind the jutting rocks and scaffolding around the asteroid fortress. He spat into the face of a dead ork as the rest of his squad joined him, chainswords buzzing, guns reloading. A pair of Blood Claws giggled in bloodlust. With no more orks to kill around them, the rok was theirs to assault. Around them, the final remnants of the monstrous force of aliens were swept away by Imperial courage.

"Break in and feast on alien blood!" Odeen laughed as he indicated the hangar he stood in front of. The cavernous chamber stunk of gasoline and was covered with ramshackle work stations. "In!" he bellowed, "death to the enemies of Russ!" Sprinting at the head of his party of warriors, Odeen charged across the hangar and in through one of the many doorways. "Comb this place! Find the energy's source!" He charged down the sour-smelling stone hallway he found himself in, axing his way past a sleeping ork, and barging into a filth-strewn cavern that could only have been a mess hall by the amount of food scraps lying about. Odeen's nose stung, though used to unwashed chambers, even the stink of this place would shame any of the beerhalls he'd known in his long life.

"I can smell them," one man whispered behind Odeen, "they come." Odeen's senses, honed in the wilds of Fenris, could detect the foe also: an unsteady tramping of feet coming from a nearby tunnel dug into the side of the wall, either by hand or a messy drill.

"Charge!" Odeen roared as he raised his axe and rushed the tunnel. The ugly head of a bit boy appeared in the hole just as Odeen swung his axe. This one fell, but more poured out, already bloodied. Some were missing limbs or limping under the pain of bullet wounds. Some appeared unarmed; an oddity for such beasts. Odeen gave this little thought as the orks fed themselves to Space Wolf weaponry. In the noise of the one-sided contest, Odeen did not hear the approaching feet from the other halls.

The air was abruptly lit by shrill bolterfire. The man next to Odeen: a tall warrior with a red ponytail and a ragged red beard, exploded into blue fire. Falling to the ground, even his armor burned under the eldritch flames. Odeen looked in anger at their attacker and beheld the silhouette of his greatest enemy in the archway of one of the nearby doors. Tall, blue, and wearing a ragged loincloth upon its armor, with icy cold eyes that shone like frozen embers in the still blackness that lay behind his eyeholes. A looming blue-and-yellow headdress adorned the warrior's helmet, mysterious in function. In his hands, the feared bolter, but Odeen knew it was much more than that. It was a Rubric Marine: an ancient ghost locked inside hollow power armor, but a traitor none-the-less. It was a Thousand Son.

"For Russ!" yelled a helmeted Space Wolf, his grey pelt fluttering as he charged, whirling chainsword above his head. A second volley from the traitor gifted the noble Astartes with a death identical to the first, firing flaming rounds from its ancient weapon, crusted with wicked Tzeench runes. As the orks withdrew, another Thousand Son appeared in the door and raised his bolter.

The return from the Space Wolves cut into both ghosts. Those beautiful headdresses crumbled under a hail of rockets. Holes were blasted in both. Instead of blood, dust washed forward from the holes gauged by bolterfire. The lead collapsed, empty armor falling in on itself, only ancient dust rising from the shell, which no occupant wore. This small victory was robbed from them as a swarm of glittering bodies glided past the Thousand Son. There were no words Odeen had to describe the bouncing, giggling, many-armed creatures with shifting human-like faces, knobby horns, who were wreathed in a dancing wreath of multi-coloured light.

"Reinforcements!" Odeen yelled into his earpiece as the daemons charged, throwing fire upon the Space Wolves that ignited metal like paper and burned through anything it touched with ferocity. "The powers of Tzeench are upon us! Send help!" As the man next to him burned to dust, Odeen snatched a fallen bolter from a skeletal hand. He raised it into a giggling daemonic face and squeezed the trigger…

…

"Charge!" Logan roared, gesturing violently at the rok to his remaining warriors. Rushing into the rok's many cave-like entrances, disorganized and feral, the Space Wolves went. Banding together to form a great pack, the wolves would devour their prey with vengeful ferocity for the warriors they'd thus far lost. Logan rushed into the hangar, sending frantic messages to all channels, demanding aid. He would not join the fight until he knew he would receive the help he needed.

"Logan," boomed the Black Tomb as he trundled into the orkish hangar. The two moved to a nearby wall to stay out of the way of anyone who entered. Though now the hangar was empty, more Imperial units would be bringing up the rear. "I must question your rash choice to storm the rok. Codex Astartes dictates…"

"Codex Astartes got us here!" Logan yelled, "if you would follow your instincts and not some ancient words, we would have victory!" Rage heated his very soul, Logan would not put down his axe until it had split the flamboyant blue helm of a Thousand Son's warrior. He vowed this.

"Logan, if the Thousand Sons do garrison the rok, a more decisive strike may be called for," the Black Tomb said.

"If THOSE traitors have the rok in their hands, they will use their cowardly magics to defend it from a bombing. We must gut these halls, kill their warriors, and drag their leader out by his pretty blue helmet!" Logan barked.

"Logan, if sightings of the Alpha Legion are confirmed, there may be more to it that…" the Black Tomb didn't finish his sentence as a hidden hatch on the roof, no doubt used as a hidden door on the ceiling, built to be accessed from atop a mountainous orkish vehicle, flipped open.

Down from it, dropped a green armored chaos lord, bald and with a rebreather mask, with a wrist wringed with cybernetic snakes and a bolter: Vashuss. He landed heavily atop the Black Tomb and slashed into its top with his serpents, each one maliciously biting the dreadnought. Logan raised his storm bolter as the Black Tomb shook, electricity leaping from the snake-heads. The dreadnought turned abruptly, against its will, knocking Logan to the floor.

Flipping down, Vashuss tore the sepents from the Black Tomb, then carved a sweeping gash in the ancient carapace with his snakes' sharp teeth. He whipped the serpents back, tearing at Logan, forcing him to turn over lest he get gutted. Vashuss raised his bolter to the gash he'd rent into the Black Tomb's front and fired the contents of his bolter deep into the dreadnought. Bolt after bolt shot into the shadowy crack broken into the ancient warrior's protction, detonating deep inside the hulk. He would have continued, but dashed off when a pair of Ultramaines charged into the hangar, firing their bolters.

Logan rose and the Black Tomb fell in a sickly shower of leaping sparks. Logan roared as he pumped shots at the fleeing traitor, but could not break his scaled armor. Vashuss broke through the wall: a secret door, and was gone.

"Damn you!" Logan rushed at the door, but the two Ultramarines restrained him, barely. Logan threw one to the floor and was about to send the other sailing, but froze after hearing a few sobering words.

"It's a trap, Logan. Enter there and chaos will amush you," one of the marines warned, Logan was too enraged to tell or care which. He ceased struggling and turned painfully to behold the fallen giant. Flames leapt from his assault cannon near where a snake had bitten into it. Amidst the mess of black, twisted metal, Logan could still see the screaming impression of Calgar forged on the front, now despairing at the dead machine that lay broken around his metal body.

"Calgar," Logan said through his wolf teeth, body shaking in a warrior's fury "I will avenge…"

Vashuss returned to the doorway and let a storm of bolter shells fly at Logan. They thudded off his grayish armor, drawing blood here and there, rocking the stony man with their explosions. Then one broke through Logan's forhead, breaking his enraged face apart in a hail of crimson shrapnel. The murdered Space Wolf tumbled backward, his axe clattering anti-climactically to the messy floor. The Logan's mouth remained open, silently yelling in muted rage, while the rest of his skull smeared the armor around it. Now two beautiful corpses of giants stained the hangar with their fallen glory. The two marines returned fire, but they were shooting at empty space. The secret door closed behind the chaos warrior and Vashuss was gone.


	22. Abaddon Arrives on Armageddon

The holodisplay couldn't be more clear. Across all of the war-stained lands of Armegaddeon, across every expanse of desert and steppe of tortured soil, the orks were on the move. In thick green snakes of infantry columns and tanks that threw up dust clouds with the weight of their heavy march, the orks were on the move by the ten million towards a single, isolated spot.

"Helsreach. That energy signal from the rok thing is attracting them," muttered Armstrong as he stood on the bridge of his command ship, now in orbit. Were it not for the fear-inspiring clouds, he'd be able to spot the ash dunes and the storm-broken oceans. He had heard the reports from the rok, that two chaos legions were sighted and the creatures of chaos now roamed freely across his beloved world. He took those reports with a grain of salt. Deep inside himself, he wondered if he thought this way only because he refused to allow them to be true.

'Emperor save us if they are.' The forces stationed around the rok were taking them seriously enough. He'd retransmitted dozens of requests for aid to almost every Imperial agency that they could contact. Even contact with the Black Templars was attempted.

"Sir," echoed the Imperial Navy officer on the opposite end of the spacious bridge, "all attempts to bomb the rok have failed. It is defended by unknown energies. Shall we try another orbital bombardment?"

"Keep strikes up," insisted Armstrong. 'Emperor…I don't know how to fight chaos.'

…

Afennor watched from the top of the thunderhawk's starboard wing as the clouds broke again. A shimmering beam of light so brilliant that it hurt his eyes to look at, broke the heavens. It was a pillar of sun, turning night into day and shadow to fire. From miles away, it seared Afennor's skin. When it abated, there was no difference to the mountain of rock that the orks, and now chaos, fought from. He was in no condition to fight: his bones were broken by the bolt round and though he was healing quickly, his limp was too serious. On the wing, he sat, watching the battle through the scope on his sniper rifle.

'I will avenge you, Randorse, Black Tomb, and everyone else that traitor has killed.' He looked at the wreck, propped up between a pair of rhinos, tended heavily to by three techmarines whose hands and servo-arms danced across the massive sections of the carapace, the screaming impression of Calgar still horribly obvious. Afennor took a round from his rifle and tucked it into an empty ammo pouch separately from everything else. 'When I fire this round, the man I kill with it will be…him.'

In the distance, he looked over the rok. Explosions flashed harmlessly off it despite the endless roll of thunder from Imperial artillery batteries. Swooping birds of the Imperial Navy fared no better. Not even the other thunderhawk could find a break in its mysterious shielding. The combat was raging on inside the rok itself. With what nightmares? Afennor had an idea but was not so twisted that he could imagine their unnatural forms or talents. He clutched his sniper rifle close to his chest and slid to the edge of the wing so to hop down.

'I will avenge all of you.' With a heavy fall, he jumped down, landing catlike across the ground. Loading his rifle, Afennor dashed across the field towards the rok, eyes full of hate and heart full of conviction. And so Afennor raced to do battle with chaos for a second time.

…

"What the hell is that?" whispered Armstrong in tense fear as he squinted to the holodisplay. The faint energy signal that flickered upon the shining representation of the world's surface was swiftly becoming a pyre. Deeper and deeper it glowed, consuming the rok.

"AHHHH!" In the corner an astropath shrieked as he fell to the floor. Two men rushed to raise him up, but fled in horror when they turned him over. His whole face was twisting together into a chaotic and unnatural mess of skin and bone, like the front of his skull had been rearranged. Chillingly, no blood showed itself.

'It's like someone stewed his face,' Armstrong thought, his heart racing. He turned away just in time to miss the sight of a bone-tainted explosion of red. A hot piece of gut landed in his thinning hair and he brushed it away. "Emperor save us," he whispered as he looked in fear at the growing signature. "Warn the Astartes!" he shouted. "They may need to withdraw fast!"

And on the planet, the orks still migrated by the billion towards the intensifying signature.

…

"Commander, we've received our orders to withdraw!" shouted sergeant Nalshashus to Captain Larsanter of the Ultramarines. "Directly from the chapter master!" Larsanter barely heard the sergeant as he ducked beneath an Alpha Legion's chainsword. Stabbing up into the man's gut with his combat knife, Larsanter cursed as the blade broke. The sergeant jumped into the Alpha Legion heretic with his own chainsword, but it too was turned aside. Larsanter, Nalshashus, and the other six members of first squad battled the Alpha Legion in the tunnels of the rok. Outside, so they heard, Ultramarine warriors continued to fight off Alpha Legion warriors as they emerged from the rok. Deeper inside, the Space Wolves battled their arch enemies: the Thousand Sons.

"Reloaded!" said an Astartes behind Larsanter.

"Back and fire!" Larsanter barked from beneath his crested helmet. The squad fell back and pointed their freshly reloaded bolters up the tunnel and into the faces of the traitors. In a proud roar of bolterfire, three of the six Alpha Legion warriors fell. The other three surged forward, but could not walk through the whithering hail in the narrow tunnel. The last was felled by the sergeant himself, his chainsword whirling.

"Pardon, sergeant?" asked the captain. The approach feet from behind them. Bolters turned to face a young scout. Larsanter recognized Afennor.

"Brother captain?" asked Afennor, "have you encountered a heretic who wields a nest of cybernetic vipers as his weapon?"

"I have not, scout," Larsanter replied.

"Captain, we must withdraw," repeated Nalshashus, walking back the way they came. "The energy of the warp is getting strong. We are advised to fall back."

"We run from Chaos?" asked Larsanter.

"Captain, perhaps withdrawl will be the best option if it comes from our chapter master?" suggested one of the troopers.

"Perhaps, battle-brother. All…" Larsanter paused, noticing Afennor had slipped away while they spoke, "withdraw then."

…

The whole chamber had been consumed by the fires of the warp. Ahriman stood outside the chamber wherein the enlarged rift had opened. The mouth of the tunnel where he stood was filled completely with the blood-red fires of the rift. Now ant then though, Ahriman could see, deep in its rolling depths, the red-eyes of a flaming mad ork. This was no literal truth as no orks stood in the midst of the rift. Instead, his twisted mind fully comprehended that this enchanted phenomina was a sign of the alien's contribution to the rift itself.

'If this should fail, then at least the flames that burn here will draw the brutes to its source, like moths to a bonfire,' Ahriman thought. He looked into the fires of the warp and watched as they shifted. The sorcerers behind him took no pause to observe something so small: only Ahriman could see it with his trained leer. 'And now he comes…'

Ahriman ducked his head respectfully as the giant of the Eye of Terror stepped forth. With a fell step, Abaddon the Despoiler emerged from the rift while his pale nose sucked up the oxygen from the once pure Imperial world.

"You have done well," his dark voice commended. He stepped past Ahriman, not bothering to speak another letter unto him. His talon scratched the wall idly. "And the Imperial sheep? Does their assault break through?" Ahriman nodded as two faithful of the Black Legion stomped out of the portal, followed by another two, then another two, then another two. Eight: one for each point upon the star. Each warrior stood around their great lord, who drove the tip of his daemon sword into the rok's floor. The whole rok shook.

And then, Abaddon spoke, and his words were shouted into the minds of all those on the planet and in orbit, through unwilling astropaths, and off into the psychic lanes to be heard a thousand million times again by other psykers and therefore the people they lived near.

"Imperials! Today is the beginning of the end for the feeble and pale dominion of mortal man across the fading stars! Upon this hour, we tread now on the road to the ultimate paradise of chaos eternal! No more will you be dominated by the idle mumbling of a reprobatic bureaucracy and the hot whips of the Inquisition. From here until never, you will live under the eclipse of the despoiler and live to sate the appetites of hungry gods!" Ahriman shook: he could hear the voice scream itself into his mind. "The material universe shall burn to cinders and the warp will swallow its ashes! And every single wealking mortal will know an eternity of hell! The skies shall not burn, for there will be no skies. The lakes and oceans will not boil, for none can truly exist! Only the true gods, and the faithful of chaos will roam this paradise, immortal, and I shall be your true Emperor! So hear me and know that I speak not of ambitions, but of the coming future, of the end of time!" He drew his sword out of the ground.

"So let the galaxy burn!" he bellowed as he clove into the warp rift with the blade. The flames rolled faster, and the rift grew greater.


	23. The Greenskins Consumed

Imperial forces were in full flight. From his perch atop the sleek eldar fighter that hovered in the air, alone, he could see landers and even a few Astartes gunships flash by him, fleeing in terror from the rok. Red cracks were breaking across the rok's stony skin, gently rending it apart. If the farseer's predictions came true, he would see the chaos ships soon.

"This world will know its death soon," Baharoth sighed as a fat troopship cruised by him. Under any circumstances, his craft would be reduced to smouldering ash just for being alien. Foolish, nearsighted humans…

"It is what they expect, my lord," replied one of the four swooping hawks alongside him. "It is what the great lord of chaos promised. But had we gotten here sooner, do you think…"

"No, it was inevitable. The orks' hate would have manifested here sooner or later. The humans couldn't have stopped it even if we told them," Baharoth replied.

"What shall we do, my lord?" asked one of the hawks. "We came here and delivered out message, so the humans understand. Now what?"

"My road ends here, brothers," replied the Pheonix Lord. "I was never meant to escape. If you value your lives, you may retreat with the rest of the vanguard. But I intend to strike when the chaos ships arrive, do what I can." Below them, a lance of red lightning leapt from the rok and caressed one of the bottom landers. Flames leapt from the ship and it spiraled to the ground, crashing into a bright orange blossom of inferno. As the last lander passed the waiting eldar ship, several streaks of black flashed up to the side of the rok. Hateful ships, shaped like metal bats, complete with flapping wings and a piggish metal face. They roosted upon the rok and hidden umbilicals were fed into the rok to collect the servants of chaos. The ships were as much daemon as craft, so Baharoth surmised.

"Descend," the Phoenix Lord whispered. From the clouds, Baharoth dove, the brave eldar pilot drove his fighter alongside his ageless lord, ready to die with him for this cause. The other swooping hawks, to their credit, followed on this suicide run.

"Fire! Fire! In Khaine's name, fire!" Baharoth yelled as bolts of laser energy danced down from his blaster while he raised his sabre in a killing gesture. Hundreds of meters below, flames leapt up from the wicked bat craft. One of them shook from its perch and collapsed down the rok, clattering and crashing into ruin.

…

"The fools are defiant," Abaddon laughed as he watched the craft fall from his window. Ahriman had to agree. "Take those prisoners into the ship, and hurry!" he barked to the Thousand Son warriors as they guided handfuls of collared Space Wolves into the ship. Ahriman could feel their rage as they trudged up the tube and into captivity. The ship shook.

"I shall face them," Ahriman promised, "we can afford to lose no more ships." He drew the warp around him and….

…from a rift on the rok, Ahriman leapt out, boiling forth. He stood on the rok's mountainous summit and looked up. He realized they were assaulted not by Imperials, but by eldar: a fighter and six fying warriors. A foe was a foe and Ahriman would dispose of them forthwith. Into his hands, he took the powers of the warp and manifested them as a great storm of energy.

'Let this break their wings!' Ahriman laughed as, far off, thunder rumbled. A storm wind came from nowhere and began to turn the ashy desert below into a rolling plain of dancing dust devils. Blue lightning cracked the sky: spat forth by the faces like dragon's breath. "Master of fate, lord Tzeench, lend me your wings and beat me a gale!" Ahriman cried to the sky as more power flooded into him. A few laser shots danced off the rocks he stood near: he was being shot at. But he could not hear the sound they made over the razor-sharp wind. His robes billowed around him. He looked at the eldar now. Only one of the flying warriors was still coming at him: the others were not in control of their wings. The eldar fighter itself was as close as this solitary warrior. In a moment, Ahriman recognized the Phoenix Lord of the swooping hawks as the attacking one, his gun spitting, his sword raised. He was dangerously close now. Ahriman's eyes could see the glimmer in his wings and the jewels on his sword. The lord of the Thousands Sons shook as laser shots exploded off him.

"Let Tzeench feast upon you!" Ahriman cried as he clapped his hands. At the same time, the Phoenix Lord threw his sabre at Ahriman, sending it whirling across the gulf between the two ancients, impervious to the wind. Then, the powers of the warp struck him. The five swooping hawks behind him died first: shredded to bloody ribbons as the wind turned solid and ripped their bodies apart in a storm of knives, washing their bodies into pulp. The fighter was struck from behind by a sledgehammer of blasting wind, shattering its cockpit window and crumpling its delicate chassis. In ruin, the fighter tumbled to the ground. Baharoth himself was hit by an explosive force of warp-fueled wind that was powerful enough to cripple a titan. His armor shattered like glass and his body leapt from it in a crimson spray, turned to fluid in an instant by the explosion. The glimmering pieces of armor floated around in the wind like leaves, beautiful even in death.

[i] The cry of the wind blown away by the cry of the wind [/i]

But the whirling sabre came onwards.

'How is this possible?' Ahriman thought in alarm as he frantically concentrated on the sabre with his powers, throwing unholy magic in its way to slow its unnatural speed, and the wind shaking his footing too much to allow him to take a safe step. He focused as hard as he could, twisting reality, and began to notice the sword slowing. Concentrating, concentrating, the whirl grew slower, yet closer. Ahriman could take it from the air with his hands, it was so close. Eventually, it ground to a halt in midair, turning its point and scratching his helmet, then stopping with its tip pointing directly into his eyehole. Ahriman took the sabre from the air and cast it down the rok. He could feel a deep scratch carved in the gold that guarded his brow.

Then, in a flash of warp energy, he was gone. But the storm did not abate. As the flapping bats retreated, it only grew in intensity. The chaos ships only barely escaped.

…

Odeen sat in humble silence inside the bowels of the chaos ship, inside the cage he'd been given to share with Gruji and Frekka. The collar around his neck was one thing, but being deprived of his weapons was another. At very least, he did not sit in the holdings of the Thousand Sons, but with the Alpha Legion. He looked distastefully up at the human servant of chaos from through the bars.

"Hehehe…" giggled the man, thrilled to be alone with three Space Wolves. "We caught you puppies. Now we's going to take you and skin you!" big words for a small man. His head was bald and his clothes were the scales of snakes, woven into a tunic and trousers. His only weapon was an autopistol. "The dark gods will reward us." He reached for a spear in the corner and threatened Odeen with it. "Not so dangerous in your cage, are you?"

Then, from the shadows, another man appeared. He was young but dressed in the colours of the Ultramarines: a scout. Odeen flinched in amazement as the scout leveled a combat blade to the man's throat and hugged the thin man into him with a thick arm. The heretic whimpered in terror and mumbled. But inside this dark room, with only one exit, no one could hope to hear him.

"Your leader, him with the cybernetic serpents on his arm," the scout snarled, "where is he? Who is he?" The heretic whimpered.

"V…V…Vashuss, the lord of the Alpha Legion," the heretic replied in fear. The scout looked at Odeen.

"They cannot know I'm here," he said, "I must make it look like you did it."

"Scout, are you alone?" Frekka asked.

"Yes. But you may call me Afennor, of the Ultramarines," whispered the scout. "I swore I would kill the heretic who murdered Logan and the Black Tomb. Odeen felt a shroud of mourning cast across him. Logan? Dead? It was as if a god had fallen. Vashuss would pay. "I will spring you, brothers," added Afennor as he reached for the heretic's key.

"No," Odeen warned, "as much as I hate it here, the cowards of chaos will kill us if we are free. Feed that man to us, then take to the shadows. You will find your prey from there." Afennor nodded.

"Once we get to the heretical fleet, I'll have more places to hide from," he whispered. Then, with a hushed voice, Afennor described Vashuss to Odeen.

…

"Pups of Russ, we're…" Slaesh fell quiet, seeing the guard he'd left by the Space Wolves dead: his neck snapped, lying beside the cage that held the Astartes. Slaesh laughed. "Just as aflame here as on the battlefield," he remarked. "It is of no consequence. I came here to tell you that the new eye is opening. Perhaps you would like to see it?"

…

The ocean of orks that tramped across the ash of Armegeddon dunes suddenly felt a surge of bloodlust. They threw their faces to the sky and roared: a great WAAAAGH!"

…

On Gyrsass XI, the mutant PDF looked out from their trenches. The orks had halted their charge and were staring at the sky, screaming a loud WAAAAGH!

…

Aerastarchen maneuvered his thunderbolt to one side as he came for another pass on the orkish base. He calmed his nerves and let fly on one of the zipping orkish fighters. Hot bullets sent it to the ground. His fighter passed through the wake of charcoal smoke it left. But as he dodged through the black blossoms of orkish flak, he found the storm to lessen. The base had stopped firing. To his starboard, an undamaged orkish fighter cartwheeled into the ground.

…

"Commander…" commissar Galvantr looked through the snow at his men's directions. The orkish armor had stopped short of the leman russ column. The orks had all stopped their vehicles to do…something.

…

Karsenner thought they had alerted a sentry when the encampment suddenly cam alight. Orks, shrieking their warcry into the night.

"Team, plant the explosives, hurry," whispered Karsenner to his storm troopers through the vox-caster. He and the rest of his team hid and prepared to battle the aliens. But none came to attack the infiltrators, no gunfire even sounded.

…

Kifleem breathed what he thought was his last as he toppeld to the ground of the quarry. The other slaves were too scared to help him up. But the orkish taskmasters did not descend upon the exhausted slave. They stood where they were, waving their whips in madness, screaming madly at the sky.

…

The researchers couldn't explain it. The caged ork they had in the cell had not reacted to their stimulant in the way they'd expected. Instead, it strained against its bonds and screamed at the ceiling of its cell.

…

Beneath the surface of the cold lake, P'ier and his striking scorpions finished off the skooba boy squad, killing the amphibious warriors in clouds of black blood that filled the water. Signaling to his warriors, P'ier leapt behind a mound of rock, causing a school of fish to scatter, and prepared to receive the charge of the other skooba boys. But as they watched, the orks, in their crude diving suits, were looking to the surface of the lake, far above them. Bubbles were emerging from their diving masks. One of the masks came off as the ork screamed it from its face. He was still howling as he drowned.

…

"WAAAAAGH!" everyone was screaming. Visions of war were clouding Grotflinga's mind and he screamed his throat out, noticing for a moment that even the grots in their pen were shrieking. He didn't take the time to reflect: he was too busy howling in excitement at the memories that washed through his mind. They weren't his memories.

…

The orks on Armegaddon couldn't stop shrieking their warcry to the sky, now churing and red like a storm of blood. Their ember-hot eyes were burning and bits of their skin began to pop. From random points around their bodies, fires leapt up: an instant pyre as one hundred million orks burned. It was the funeral pyre for their whole race, for across the galaxy, from the skooba boys before P'ier's scorpions to the warriors around Galvner and his tanks, the orks and their servants burned. Even their spores had the life sucked from them by the invisible shockwave.

"WAAAAAGH!!!" And each one was consumed by inferno, burning to ash in seconds. Thus, it was repeated across the galaxy. Then, the rift exploded across Armegeddon. The whole world simply disappeared under the curtain of red fire.

A new Eye of Terror had been born.

…

"Beautiful," Abaddon whispered from the bridge of Planetkiller. "Just beautiful." He looked into the red whirlwind of enery that replaced Armegeddon. "The orks, who have so long hindered us, have paid their debt. No more will that race bother us." The orks were no more. Soon, the Imperium would follow


	24. A Vision

Usoran's eyes were closed. Inside the bowls of his personal chamber, deep within the garrison's fortress on Terra, he sat, cross-legged. Half of his brain was taking its rest, half of his brain observed the bland stone walls around him. His eyes were fixed, hawk like, onto the sword he had in the corner of the windowless room, leaning against the wall unceremoniously, more beautiful than anything around it. Usoran had not dared a second inspection of it after removing it from the Cypher's corpse. But as he sat and looked, he could not help but wonder what secret Cypher had taken with him to his pyre. Who had he been, and what of the nature of the sword itself? Could it be, as rumored, the Lion Sword itself?

The thought that weighed on his mind with equal fortitude was the sight he had beheld on the other side of the Eternity Gate. He was perhaps one of the few non-custodes who had been there since the end of the Horus Heresy. But the sight of those arrayed custodes elite, phalanxed around… Usoran felt like an apprentice who had toyed with his master's tools. He hadn't been ready to look upon the Emperor.

"[i]Usoran[/i]"

The Dark Angel heard the voice as if whispered into both his ears at once. He rose and stepped towards the door: the great slab of granite that guarded his privacy.

"[i]Usoran my child[/i]" whispered the voice. Usoran knew it couldn't be the voice of Usorckai, his father, or Usormaelach, his mother, not that he could even recall their faces let alone their voices.

"Who intrudes?" Usoran asked. As his gauntlets moved across the door, he felt the air grow colder, though not biting with winter's chill, but cooler, more refreshing. Wind, impossible in a chamber like this, ruffled his bare head. "Emperor's eyes…" he cursed as he turned to look behind him. He saw, in place of a drab stone chamber, a rolling field of grass, coloured in the shade of the Dark Angel's armor. Mighty oaks rose from the healthy land in clusters, and a dirt path streaked across this sunlit landscape. Sculpted clouds fluffed the deep blue sky. Usoran turned and saw no sign of the door he'd just touched, but more of the beautiful landscape. In the great distance, he beheld a squat hilltop, crested by a cheerful cottage with red shingles.

"[i]To that place, my son[/i]" whispered the voice. Usoran strode across the landscape, his heavy boots crushing healthy grass into deep, muddy footprints. But the more he walked, the more solid the ground became. When Usoran checked his feet to see what had changed, he saw he was wearing wicker sandals. His armor was gone: replaced by a peasant's tunic and floppy workman's trousers. Even Usoran himself was different. He inspected his wiry arms and felt his face. He was a child again.

"[i]Here[/i]" Usoran ran the rest of the way, the house now larger and further from him. Rage boiled in his heart, for now he had one, and flared from his eyes. Though he now walked with the flesh of a child, his mind was untouched.

'This is Marmaxil IV,' Usoran suddenly realized, 'home.' It was like recalling a half-forgotten dream to be here again, even if he was unfamiliar with this part of the world. But the sensation of the wind, the grass, the sky, it was familiar in a visceral way. Usoran reached the house, cautious, and pushed the wooden door open with a greater strain than he had with most doors he'd opened for the past few decades. He'd forgotten how it had felt to be weak, to be defenseless. The Dark Angels had given him a new life, a better life, and a great cause to die for. How strange it was to have it all robbed from him. 'I will make this daemon pay.'

Stepping inside, Usoran was greeted by the pleasant interior of a country cottage. There was something familiar about it, in the globe of Marmaxil IV in the corner, the wooden table, the three swords lining the wall, and the beds. One was for the farmer and his wife. Two were for their twin daughters and one was for their son, who was strong and brave. Usoran remembered now; he was familiar with this part of the world. He'd lived here. It had indeed been a long time.

"[i]Hello my child,[/i]" said a man seated at the table. He was bald, skinny, and ancient beyond Usoran's reckoning. How the man's bony joints did not snap when moved, he did not know. His face: like a prune, his fingers: like sticks, but his eyes carried all the wisdom of one thousand lifetimes in their smiling gaze. With a thin hand, he gestured to one of the chairs. Usoran had to use his hands to boost himself up onto it. There was something in those eyes, something Usoran trusted. He did not feel the same revulsion as he had harbored moments before.

"I am Brother Usoran of the Dark Angels," he introduced himself to the ancient.

"[i] Your name is Usoran Tabbercs, of the Usor clan, the largest on Marmaxil IV," [/i]" corrected the ancient casually, his mouth not moving. Tabbercs: the word had not left Usoran's lips or trespassed on his ears in a lifetime.

"Tabbercs is gone, the Usor are gone, and I am not your child," Usoran insisted calmly. "Who are you?"

"[i]They're coming, Usoran, they're coming to kill you and everyone you love,[/i]" the ancient said.

"Who come?" Then, the ancient spoke a name Usoran had not heard since he'd left Marmaxil IV.

"[i]Clan Jara[/i]"

Abruptly, a tall, dark-red armored warrior burst into the room. He cast a torch inside and sprayed the walls with autogun fire.

"FOR JARA!" he screeched like a maniac as he slammed the door closed. Outside, Usoran heard gunfire and shrieks. Jara killing Usor, people dying, all his childhood friends! What did he or they do to deserve this ruthless act?

Usoran Tabbercs jumped down from his chair and grabbed one of the swords from the wall. His father used it to spar with him sometimes, to keep young Usoran ready, to honor his clan. If those Jara bastards hurt Usorckai, Usoran would kill them all!

Fire in his young eyes, rage boiling deep as he heard his mortal enemies slay his fellow clansmen, he threw open the door. Below the hill, was the Usor's village. It burned now, and red-armored Jara drove through it in their trucks, firing autoguns. They were too far away to do anything about, as much as young Tabbercs regretted it, but the inbreeds of Jara were not too far from him.

"Where is your vox-station!" a voice shouted. Usoran crept around the house to its source. He choked back a scream when he saw his sisters and mother lying on the dark green grass; shot in the head. Usorckai was sitting against the wall, face bruised from fighting Jara, cornered by two of the brutes. "Where is it, Usor dog?" demanded one of the two bullies, loading his autogun. One of them was tattooed with an unfamiliar red symbol across his face. It looked like a wheel with eight bladed points.

"For the Usor! For Tabbercs!" Usoran's little voice cried as he rushed both men. Striking the way his old father had taught him, he took the first man in the neck before he could even turn to face his attacker. Neck squirting blood, the Jara fell to the ground. The shocked Jara hesitated, looking from his felled friend, then to Usoran. He didn't have time for another look. Usoran jumped onto him, sword forward. After a brief struggle, Usoran had the man's autogun. The Jara, who'd taken the sword through the gut when the boy had jumped at him, cursed and tried to stop the bleeding. Usoran stepped back and shot the Jara in the skull, dropping the autogun in fear when it shook. Did guns shake so much when fired? His wrists hurt.

"Father," Usoran wept as he scampered over to the dying man, "F…Father. No." Usorckai was too injured to even know his brave son was even there. His eyes were swollen shut and his head lolled to the side: his skull broken from the beating. Usoran Tabbercs got on all fours and screamed, his dead family around him. "Father!"

"For Jara! For Chaos!" he heard someone.

Recalling the Jara, Usoran rose up. He could taste blood. Reaching for his sword, he drew it from the Jara's gut, and his eyes turned to the smoke from his village. Whatever had stirred the Jara, who had been petty rivals, into genocidal madness, Usoran didn't care. He had nothing to lose. He would die killing Jara. Sword raised, Usoran charged down the hill.

"For the Usor! For Tabbercs!" he screamed, blade raised. A Jara bullet shot into him. Usoran only felt the impact and half of his body went numb. He ran onwards.

Then, mysterious pods slammed into the village. They were dark green, and from them, emerged monstrous knights in green armor. The strange insignia they wore suggested a sword flanked by wings: an insignia used by none of the clans. Their guns ripped the Jara apart and their whirling blades scythed through even the trucks the Jara used.

Usoran Tabbercs didn't care whose these new fighters were. He rushed into the village, still bleeding, and searched for Jara to kill. He spotted one, lying on the ground, dead or wounded, his innards around him. Was he dead? Usoran rushed the body and stabbed it anyway.

"Die! Die! Leave the Usor alone!" Usoran Tabbercs shrieked. Then, he fell back: the whole left side of his body was red.

"Brother-captain…" he heard a deep voice say over him as one of the green men came over to his side. "This one's alive." The shooting stopped: the Jara were dead or fled. Usoran closed his eyes, fading into unconsciousness with blood loss.

"I saw him fight. Get him some attention! It would be a waste to let this one go to the Emperor…" The last thing he remembered, was the sensation of a huge set of hands lifting him up. So much like his father.

"[i]Usoran. You took your sword and defended your home upon that day. Now, hear me. The time comes again when you must carry a blade into battle that threatens to rob you of all. But it shall not be the simple Jara, but chaos itself. It shall not be your blade, but mine. It shall not be Marmaxil IV, but all of the galaxy. Take my blade and battle with chaos when it comes to Terra. The future is uncertain, and not even the Emperor's voice can say what will transpire in the order of events that will come. But, in the final hour, you will need my blade, where you will stand just as you did upon Marmaxil IV. But not around the Imperial Palace. It will not be there that the final battle will be played.[/i]"

"Where then on Terra will I stand if not by my Emperor?" asked Usoran Tabb… of the Dark Angels.

He opened his eyes and realized he had spoken to an empty room. He was sitting just as he had been before. He looked at the sword, which grinned at him from its dark corner in the chamber, daring him to lift it. Standing boldly up, Usoran approached the blade and lifted it. It felt…warm.

'As you wish. Primarch,' he thought.

…

The galaxy is a large, dark place. But some corners are deeper than others, and some shadows carry secrets blacker than the abyss that holds them. Apollyon had dared to venture to one such place: the tomb of the Outsider, to witness the eldar's final move against the ancient enemy.

The sun filled the sky, but no light came upon the planet that Apollyon stood upon. Hiveships: now endangered thanks to the genocide brought by the necrons, hovered in the low atmosphere of the sterile world. Staring up into the little star, which was surrounded by a shell of material forged by hands far older than humanity itself, Apollyon's mind filled with a hellish vision, even for the twisted primarch. While the tyranids around him writhed and shuddered, the thoughts of the C'tan the Outsider. Not even Apollyon could dare to approach the lightless star above his head, filling the sky of this cold world.

Through the eyes of the enslavers, Apollyon could see the tiny eldar fleet of four ships and the blackstone fortress approach the star. One of the ships, the largest jewel of the eldar fleet, was the [i] Hand of Asuryan [/i], a mighty eldar flagship. Its vast blue wings could eclipse the stars if if swooped low over his head on its graceful wings. Its streamlined hull suggested a flying bird in its silhouette and was beautiful enough to have come from a woman's necklace, were it smaller.

Then, through his psyker channels, into his corrupted mind, the feedback from a celestial exchange. What had the eldar brought with them?

[i]Feel those souls, Outsider. Feel those souls, deep inside their metal bodies. No more C'tan are stopping you. You have connections to all those yummy souls, right?[/i] The words ended with a gout of fanatical cackling. Apollyon heard nothing for a moment, coming to him from across the gulf of space. The words of the psyker being, whatever it was, he could hear, but the words of the Outsider were silent. Perhaps it was better that way.

[iYou're an insane one. I like that, I like you. So I want to see you well fed. You can feel those necrontyr souls connected to your every whim? They're all for you! EAT UP![/i} The voice, though not spoken in sound, appeared mischieviously playful, no doubt spoken by a treacherous prankster. [i}Eat up, I insist. HAHAHAHHAHA![/i}

The enslavers around Apollyon were dead now: suffocated by the atmosphere.

[i] Yes, eat them. Eat them all! HAHAHHAHAH![/i]

Apollyon could feel the air grow tense, the void almost electric. Then it was gone. It was done.

[i] Remember me, Outsider? Not the first trick I've played on you![/i] laughed the divine eldar voice from around Apollyon's head. If what Apollyon predicted was going to come true, then he would not keep this body for long. His prediction was confirmed when the Blackstone Fortress fired into the star.

The shell began to come apart.

"I shall require new flesh," Apollyon was, for the first time, unsure if the enslaver fleets had enough flesh left to cater to this basic need. As the star's shell came apart, pieces began to fragment off it, flying around like moon-sized shrapnel. More than his body would not survive this: the very world his feet were planted on was set to come apart under the hail. Even the eldar suffered injuries. As the fleet sped away, they left the Blackstone Fortress where it was. One flying chunk of the star's crust struck it and the fortress was gone: destroyed. But its work had survived it.

'I need more flesh,' thought Apollyon as he watched the eldar fleet flash away. 'And, perhaps they…" his mind reached out to the eldar as the sky fell. The hive mind caught the quickest whiff of the eldar's thoughts as Apollyon's body was crushed.

Somewhere in the void, some of the last gasps of the hive fleet turned, drawn to the eldar's presence. Apollyon's mind followed them.


	25. The Stranger that the High Lord Saw

Eight planets. Eight rounded hells, unrecognized from their original forms. going no longer by their mortal names, but now by titles gifted to them by their infernal masters. And now, each of them orbited through the void, lit not by the gentle kiss of a sun's hot fire, but ignited by the reddish light of the rift that now sat where Armegaddon once was. Weaving in and out from the eight rounded colossi of the stars, swarming as numerous as the locusts in an apocalyptic plague of crop-devouring death, were clouds of ships, crewed by heretics, each one a floating castle laden with cannon.

"What a sight," Armstrong commented as he watched the holo-screens on the bridge of his flagship. "What a terrible sight," the truth was, Armstrong was numb with terror on the inside. He couldn't cry out in terror because he was frightened to, he couldn't feel his anger, knowing that such a feeling towards this whirlpool of the immaterium would be like yelling insults at a god. He could only stand, his ship with the rest of the remnants of the Imperial fleet. "Patch this sight through to command," Armstrong insited to his crew. "We…we must be prepared to fight to the death."

Eight daemon worlds and thousands of heretical ships, with a warp storm as that filled space was what Armstrong saw. Somewhere in the mix of heretical power, was the black candle of the Despoiler himself: the demigod of heretics. Abaddon.

"Sir, we must disengage from this system!" yelled one of the crewmen. Armstrong's eyes were frozen to the screen, so he did not check the speaker.

"By the Emperor," Armstrong said to himself, "Holy Terra is within striking distance from here." He was too dazed with the magnitude of the horror. Nothing mattered to him now. If a torpedo found the bridge right now, it would be nothing to him but a loud noise. 'How can this happen?'

"WE MUST DISENGAGE NOW!" yelled a frantic crewman from his seat, beside a pale-faced officer who was praying frantically.

"Disengage," Armstrong whispered. 'Emperor save us.'

…

Inside the small chamber, deep in the glamerous mountain-palaces of Terra, a single screen flickered. Upon it, a steppe that stretched into the horizon. Upon the steppe, a scattered mess of fallen necron warriors.

"And so command from all sectors have reported," spoke a tall man, clad in the finest silks that the best taylors on Terra could spin, "and so the Departmento Munitorum have confirmed." His face was only partially lit up, like the moon on a cloudy night, by the soft glow of the screen: the only source of light in this room. Even that light grew dimmer when the screen's display flashed back to its default display: the Imperial eagle rendered in bronze upon a stone-grey background.

"Fellow lords, we all shall show great caution over such reports. In these waning times, when all news spoken here is of tragedy and apocalypse, such news is like a stone inside a sandal: out of place and unwelcome. How can such an impossibility be verified?" asked a voice from the darkness.

"Fellow lord," said the first man, "It must surely be the will of the Emperor. All your departments, from the Administratum to the Officio Assassinorum must trumpet this to their adepts. Let the word spread throughout His domain that the Emperor's will has freed us from the necron scourge." A gentle chorus of low mumbling came from the darkness as the other High Lords discussed with one another what they would do.

"Fellow lords, I am one man who has learned over my long years never to trust a blessing. Until this is confirmed, I will not be so quick to spread rumor," stated another voice from the darkness.

"It is not just the military that has detected this," said yet another voice, visible only as a hodded silhouette in the light of the screen. "The navigators guilds all around come from distant sectors with news of the tombfleets stilled. Every necron has gone silent, as if their very souls were sucked from them. I believe it was the Emperor who raised the necrons to battle the tyranids, then felled them with the death of the hive fleets. Every navigator will know."

In the darkness, there was a beep.

"Do not contact me when I am in a session unless it…" said someone else in the darkness. There was a pause. "Praise the Emperor," he half-whispered, half laughed. "Praise him truly…when?" to hear such an old man speak so youthfully brought a grin to the silk-clad High Lord. There must have been a good cause to celebrate then.

"Fellow lords," came the announcement, "it has happened again. The orks are destroyed." All eyes turned to the screen and grainy, shaky footage of a field of orks bursting into flame greeted the High Lords. Each of them clustered in, whispering prayers as the footage looped. "And it has happened everywhere."

The orks are destroyed? The news was delivered staight forward, but to everyone in the room, he might has well have said that death had been destroyed, or fire had been destroyed, or storms had been destroyed. The invincible orks, whose numbers were larger than the humans and climbing at a rate of billions a year? Was even Him on the Golden Throne so powerful? The screen changed once more to its default display.

"Yes?" asked the same voice, following the same beep. Would the next footage show a second fall of the eldar? "Impossible," came the low whisper. "Emperor save us."

The Imperial eagle upon the screen was rudely replaced by a hellish vision of a warp storm of gargantuan proportions. All the High Lords believed they beheld the Eye of Terror, until they noticed a passing planet, dwarfed by the storm.

"Isn't that Chosin?" askedo one of the High Lords of Terra.

"No, it can't be…" whispered another in ignorant defiance of the truth. The High Lords watched as eight rounded shadows broke out of the twisting depths of the storm, drifting forwards like a titan's armada. Eight daemon worlds.

"This is the Armageddon system," one lord whispered, "our order of business, fellow lords, has presented itself clearly enough, and the Emperor's will cannot be taken for granted. We must re-route all military forces. The Emperor has cleansed us of our enemies so that we may better battle chaos." There was a collective murmur of agreement, though no eyes had yet left the screen.

"This wil be death," the lord continued, "death upon the grandest scale, and when the that storm has closed, I expect the blood of one billion martyrs to wet our Imperium. But we cannot…" he paused for a moment.

The whole display had just been replaced by a stranger, filling the screen in place of the warp storm. In a cloak as black as the background he sat in, the hooded stranger wore a mask, equally black, and metal by its texture. The High Lord saw nothing but dark behind his eyeholes. Then he was gone, so swiftly that the High Lord questioned whether he had really seen him.

"Did anyone else just see that?" asked the High Lord suddenly.

"Of what do you speak?"

"Show it to us again. Turn the footage back and point it out." The footage was turned backwards, but as the image looped again, as the High Lord watched, the stranger did not reappear. Nothing but illusion surely. Fear could drive a man's imagination mad.


	26. The Stage is Set

"The entire wrath of the Imperium will fall upon us," said Abaddon to the room, deep inside his flagship. "The False Emperor's pups will swarm us with their weakness. But we will break through them like a juggernaught. And your fleets will ensure that." Inside the chamber, lay eighteen chaos lords whose command extended over the locust swarm fleets of the countless heretical armies. Not even Abaddon knew how many fleets they collectively controlled. "What the Imperium will goad into our path, I do not know. But there is one clash that will stand above the others. Listen and you will taste victory. Fail to heed my orders, and you will die with the Imperium." He strode over to the table, built of planks of carved bone. Stretched out over it was a rug of parchment, its surface coated with an ancient map.

"Terra, my lord Despoiler," sneered one of the chaos lords, caressing the parchment with his three-fingered white hand. His black and pink power armor was emblazoned with the insignia of Slaanesh.

"DO NOT TOUCH IT!" yelled Abaddon. "This is one of the few of its kind, ancient even in the days of the Heresy. I would sooner replace you than one drop of ink this map shows me." It seemed a paradox that Abaddon could yell so loud without his voice tearing the map.

"As you can see, this is Holy Terra in its virgin days," Abaddon continued, "the Emperor's Palace was built here, and here is where the High Lords meet, and here is the site where the first craft is said to have launched to take mankind to Luna for the first time." Abaddon looked up at the chaos lords. "Your fleets must defend my strike force of the faithful legions as we land upon Terra's skin to build our tower, which will channel the powers of the warp into the planet. The lambs will expect us to focus our main strike the Imperial palace, but that shall not come to pass. I will go there with my most faithful and with the minions of the true gods and we will take the palace, but it shall not be the main attack." Abaddon grinned when he saw the surprise in everyones' dark eyes.

"The faithful true legions of space marines will assault Terra at a different point on the planet. Survivng ships from your fleets will support this assault," Abaddon pointed at one of the continents on Terra. "Here, off the coast of this land, called Europe upon this map, there is an island. See how she is cupped within Europe's talon, with land south and east? So shall it be with us: grasping that land in our attack." Abaddon pointed to the island. "The tower shall rise here, on the soil called Camlann in antiquity. Here, the primarchs will take their legions to deal the finishing strike onto the mortal realm."

…

They came. Drifting across the void, their numbers in the hundreds, their hulls as strong as the charge of an asteroid, their guns capable of shattering moons and ending civilizations. The ships in this heretical fleet were largely small, darting craft whose warp-tainted hulls had been fashioned by the immaterium into the likeness of a giant monstrous bat. They flocked in clouds around massive black ships, whose sides were painted with the colours of chaos. This flying tide of terror rode ahead of one of the eight daemon worlds: a vast drifting orb whose land was hidden by a layer of tombstone coloured clouds. If the whole force of the chaos armada were here to support the planet and its fleet, the small Imperial fleet would be doomed.

"Here they come," Admiral Spehrahl said coldly into his vox-com. "All wings, prepare to engage the heretics. In the Emperor's name, we fight!" From his flagship, the _Starlight Pyre, _Spehrahl could see the heretics breaking off into two wings. Each claw was long enough to span a continent, threatening to envelope the Imperial fleet, whose number did not exceed one hundred ships. They were outnumbered by the foe without the planet. Everyone from Spehrahl to the lowliest rating knew this battle was hopeless.

"All formations," Spehrahl ordered into his vox-set, "assume aquilla formation. _Taris Gloria: _take the point. _Wolf of Wrath, _take your escort ships left to draw their fire. Swing in from the right flank and engage their left wing if…" Abruptly, the lights on the bridge went dark, even the pinpricks of colour that lit up the control panels. Runes disappeared, the splotch of red that indicated the enemy disappeared from the radar. Even the exit sign died. His world was turned black. Suddenly, Spehrahl felt alone in a crowded room. Not even a friendly silhouette could guide him.

"Sir! We cannot get a reading on any parts of the ship! We're totally cut off!" yelled a shrill-voiced officer from her control panel somewhere in the dark. "And hailing frequencies are down!" Spehrahl was numb to the reports coming in from across the bridge as his eyes stared at the distant planet that was slowly filling the window as well as the incoming fleets: all he could see without the lights. His heart, beaten solid from a lifetime of fighting the Emperor's wars, grew cold for the first time in a generation.

"Please," Spehrahl whispered. "Just one. Let us kill just one." He brought his face to his vox-set and spoke into the piece, despite the lack of static he heard brushing from its depths. "To whoever is hearing this: fire at will." The lights abruptly came back on.

They were not alone.

"DEATH TO THE FALSE EMPEROR! HAHAHAHA!" They were Astartes, but in dark blue and sporting bloody-red bat wings from their helmets. From their armor hung the mummified remains of their past victims. Spehrahl spotted the blank stares of shrunken heads and the shriveled joints on human hands cruelly fastened by jagged chains to them. Around each, red crackling energy: leftover residue from when they teleported aboard.

"Curse you heretics!" Spehrahl yelled as he drew a platinum plated autopistol from his holster. His yell of defiance was swept away under the screams of his staff and the cackling heretics. Bolterfire ripped through the chamber. Control panels bled sparks when they were hit, pale spider webs fractured their way across display screens. Commanders and officers were punched off their feet, getting thrown to the ground in hails of explosive fire as the heretics slaughtered with impunity. No one had even a chance to fire back.

"THE NIGHT HAS COME! HAHAHAHA!" cackled a maniac as he threw a battered commissar to the ground and began to ruthlessly kick him with a boot that could shatter stone. Spehrahl raised his autopistol and fired. His marksmenship was rewarded only by a trail of leaping sparks from the heretic's armor. Spehrahl couldn't even reload before he was hit to the ground from behind.

"BLEED YOU OLD MAN! SCREAM! I WANT TO HEAR YOU SCREAM!" laughed an unstable voice over Spehrahl's head. Paralyzed with pain, Spehrahl could not stop the giant from lifting him up. By now, the bolterfire had stopped, leaving the room full of the heretics and what few of the command bridge they'd chosen to spare. In the corner, standing over a bruised comms technician, two of the heretics argued violently over who'd earned the pleasure of killing her. The others were chaining the five brutalized survivors of the short massacre to their seats.

"Tell your men to stand down, to the Night Lords," the heretic said as he forced Spehrahl into his seat. Spehrahl felt cold shackles close around his ankles, though he didn't care. He looked out at the approaching planet.

'Please, let us kill just one.'

"Admiral? Do as you are told!" In the corner, a woman's scream told Spehrahl the arguing heretics had made up their minds.

"I will not obey your words, heretic," Spehrahl said blandly. He looked into the man's helmeted face, into the red-tinted eyepieces. "I wil never obey a creature like you." He looked back to the planet, which grew closer.

"Then you will watch your fleet die, before I torture you to death." From the corner, another voice spoke.

"No, please…please…stop…AAAAHHHH!" cackles from the heretics joined the scream.

"Then I die faithful, unlike you, traitor," Spehrahl said blandly as he saw the enemy fleet seem to light up. Red flashes, countless ones, thousands per second, one after another, flickering like a dying light. It was beautiful in its own way. Then, the flickering stopped.

"_Sir,_" buzzed the vox-set. "_They're firing. Returning…" _The voice went dead as a flickering lights grew into a blazing storm. If a hurricane were made of fire, it would look like what came towards the bridge, though not directly at the window. Spehrahl could not guess how many ships might have fired, but the ship shuddered violently as some of the heretic's shots impacted against the _Starlight Pyre, _soon to be a blazing wreck: a funeral pyre to Spehrahl and his brave fleet.

"_Sir! The Luna's Wrath is down…the…taking hits…locking on…"_

'Just one, let us fight back,' Spehrahl thought. He could see, through the fire, nine flaming imperial cruisers, each taking fiery meteors to their hulls. Beautiful towers that had taken years to build were shattered like glass under rocket fire. Each of his ships, aflame, battered and cracking, their command decapitated, their crews commanded only by their immediate superiors.

"What?" the heretic near Spehrahl asked. "Damnation. Night Lords! Return!" Spehrahl heard the sound of energy crackling, thickening the air, as the Night Lords withdrew. What had summoned the madmen's attention? What did it matter?

The second barrage of enemy fire came his way…

…

Asurmen could see the imperial fleet, as vast as it was, dwarfed by the chaos swarm. The Imperials were an armada. The heretics were a cloud, the twin claws of an entire planet. From the _Hand of Asuryan_ Asurmen watched the orange glows spread like a virus across the imperial formations as every ship was dashed and broken by the waves of torpedos and lance blasts. Each little fleck of white-prowed green, each floating imperial castle, represented tens of thousands of brave humans apiece, giving their lives selflessly for a chance to stall this massive fleet for but a moment. Though these times were waning, the heroics of the Imperium had not diminished.

Flash. An imperial ship exploded into a miniature sun. Its bulk disappeared in a burning nebula of billowing inferno. Another ship went apart, taking with it every crewman who stood in its city-sized quarters.

'A worthy sacrifice,' Asurmen thought as his mind hummed as softly as the flutter of a feathery moth.

"My lord. The beacons are placed. The hive fleet comes," said an ethereal voice that existed only in Asurmen's mind.

"Withdraw the ship. The bane of Iyanden will claim this planet now," Asurmen assured the two farseers flanking him. "And pray that the sacrifice of human lives was enough." Quickly, before the chaos fleet spotted them, the solitary eldar ship fled the scene.

…

"It looks eldar," said Korsequleq as his taloned fingers caressed the archway. Its structure was built of bone, much like the pale trees that rose from the grey soil of the Night Lord's daemon world. "it was not here before. The aliens must have brought it here." He turned from the archway to the other five bat-faced men behind him. Flexing his scorpion tail, the overseer considered his options. "Our weapons have failed to bring it down. When the Night Lords arrive…"

An unearthly roar behind him drowned out the rest of the man's words.

…

The nurse closed her eyes in dread and whispered a prayer to the Emperor. In her early years, this kind of work was rewarding and pleasant, to help a newborn take her first breath of life. Mutant or not, the babe was a blessing and a single small hope with so much potential. Unfortunately, deliveries were unpleasant affairs, especially now that the sky had turned that colour after the strange-voiced man made his ethereal speech across the planet. The last words of his speech still rung in her ears.

"Let the galaxy burn!"

Her world had once been fertile and civilized. When mutations occurred more and more often, the demographics crept towards a mutant majority and not even a genocide against them could stop their numbers from swelling, fattening, like a maggot feeding on human flesh. The conflict attracted orks by the hundred millions and soon the world was boiling in a three-sided war of total attrition. This had all happened even before the old nurse's time and its effects were visible upon the planet. There were few cities left standing and those that did were crumbling heaps of bomb-blasted decay. Food was scarce and mutants were always increasing.

When all the orks died a few months ago, there had been no cause for celebration. The orks had burned to ash, releasing a speck of red mist. Astropaths across the planet died in the psychic shockwave. It had opened a tiny rift in the warp over their world, and reports from their neighbors told the same story. Everywhere where the orks died as one, a tiny warp rift opened, like the sheer power of their deaths was enough to tear reality apart. She had no reason to disbelieve that it had happened across the Imperium. She had no reason to disbelieve that the largest concentration of greenskins in the galaxy had birthed nothing less than a new Eye of Terror. And since that warp rift opened, the warping powers of chaos had subtly manifested on this planet, most cruelly, in the unborn.

"Well done, madam," the nurse said joylessly as she left the whimpering woman in her hospital bed while the other nurses tended to her.

"Is it…is it alright?" asked the woman. The nurse didn't have the heart to answer and left for the nursery, carrying...it.

'Not a single live birth in months. Not even a mutant,' the nurse thought. Though she would be obliged by Imperial law to put a baby mutant to death, she still secretly yearned for at least one child to fill the nursery. Stepping into the nursery, she closed her eyes and walked to the nearest empty table and set it down. Bravely she opened her eyes.

Their flesh was like cooked meat. Their bodies knotted and twisted. Random, horrible growths spurted from each. Some were half-formed limbs or extra heads filled with empty eyes that were bright red. Some were vaguely humanoid, but some, like the one she had just set down, more closely resembled tree branches in their general shape. Fused feet and countless growths…

The sickened nurse fled the deathly quiet nursery, leaving behind the jagged, misshapen piles that might have been children.

…

The blade was short but elegant, like a leaf. Its glistening edge was still keen after thousands of years. Even the symbols written into it were untarnished.

Vashuss turned the gladius over in his hands. He rose it into the air and chopped down with it, then flicked it into an arc and stabbed at the air, into the gut of an invisible astartes. He drew it back and thrust again, widening his stance and balancing himself.

The sound of the door behind him opening put a stop to his practice. Turning around, Vashuss confronted Lord Paskatera the Envenomed, the hated butcher of Oporotiss X. The eloquent man's footfalls echoed through the daemonic palace upon the world that had once been Cadia. Writhing statues of monstrous serpents watched him pass by as he approached his fellow lord with a hungry glare in his yellow eyes.

"Hail to the Dark Gods, Vashuss," sneered Paskatera, his fangs gleaming with every word. "The despoiler predicts we will soon be near Terra itself. However, matters beg our attention, lord."

"I know," Vashuss replied darkly, "my advance fleets have already reported to me the damnable obstacles these sheep have propped up in our path. A massive Imperial fleet, built of all the Navy and Guard forces freed by the destruction of the two xenos species. The High Lords themselves must have ordered the fleet's assembly."

"The despoiler is gathering our own fleets to engage the Imperials," added Paskatera as Slaesh stepped in, his horned helmet obscuring his staring eyes that were no doubt concentrated on Paskatera.

"He will no doubt try to keep them from striking our planets," Vashuss replied. "Much faithful blood will be shed keeping these lapdogs on their leashes. Still, even if they do destroy the fleets we send at them, what matters is we have enough power to assault Camlann when we arrive."

"Which is what concerns me, lord. The Night Lords have allowed their planet to fall behind the main fleet. There are reports of the tyranid beasts unleashed on it. By Khorne, what fools those shadow-stalking…" Vashuss quieted him with a steely glare.

"The Night Lords are expendable. Their primarch does not stand with us. They may die and their souls offered to the dark gods for all I care. All that matters is Camlann. And we can have faith that Abaddon has gathered enough faithful to strike down the Imperials that rest between us and our prize."

"It is like a serpent's bite," Slaesh added as he stepped up beside Paskatera. "The serpent slides towards its prey through the grass, silent and swift, silence his friend, the shadows: his life. Then, he gifts a single small bite. It is small, but it is enough to kill the whole beast no matter its size. One quick flashing bite to the unexpecting."

"So it will be with us," Vashuss said, "nothing matters except the attack on Camlann. Now, do not bother me with matters as insignificant as the sighting of a massive Imperial fleet." He smiled sharply at Paskatera's confused look.

"Be off, Paskatera," Slaesh demanded, "I need to speak to Vashuss alone."

"You think to order me!" shouted the other traitor. He felt something on his neck and turned to realize Vashuss had the blade of his gladius against his throat.

"I suggest you do as he says," Vashuss stated lazily. Paskatera cursed and stomped by Slaesh, giving his a threatening look as he left the daemonic chamber through its only exit. With the other man gone, Vashuss seemed to relax. He stepped over to a statue of a leaning serpent and sat against its tail, looking down at his gladius, staring darkly. Not even Slaesh could guess what memories were playing out behind his piercing eyes.

"The troops are gathered as you requested, my lord. On the fields of blasted Cadia, the Alpha Legion is finally mustered in full, ready to join the force that heads to Camlann," Slaesh stated. "All nine heads are accounted for in full."

"Then we must make the sunderings," Vashuss replied. "I plan to be there when we deal the death-blow to the Imperium, the venomous bite. You too, Slaesh, you must lead the first head alongside me."

"What of the two heads of the legion that we cannot afford to take to Camlann? Third head and sixth head?"

"They will remain behind on Cadia."

"What lie shall you tell them to tether them here?"

"I shall not lie to them, I'll tell them the truth: they stay to protect my palace from the Imperium while we take Camlann." Vashuss looked up at Slaesh, his piercing stare now turned on the marine. "But you did not come all the way to the summit of the Serpent's Lair, my palace, to tell me that we are all ready to join the despoiler's legions?"

"No, not only." Slaesh looked over his shoulder and turned back to Vashuss. "The prisoner pit, where we keep the captive astartes, one of the guards was murdered and his uniform missing."

"So? Mutants swarm across Cadia. One billion of the dregs would have killed for his flak jacket…"

"It was an astartes bolt that slew the guard. The rumor is that there is an assassin out to kill you, my lord." Vashuss' brow creased in some worry. He looked back at his gladius.

"The Imperium would not be so foolish," Vashuss insisted. He stood up. "There are dozens of warring mutant gangs across Cadia, killing for favor and for thrill. Do not drone into my ears with rumors of assassins ever again. The astartes bolt? Even these mutants could have such things. I shall be in the command wing." He sheathed his gladius.

…

The heretical fleet drove ahead of the daemon worlds to engage the Imperial fleet in the depths of space where the worlds would not suffer the wrath of the conflict. Armada was too small a word to describe the wave of ships that soared across the void towards its powerful prey. The lights of the heretical ships were a manmade galaxy. Their long hulls bristling with cannon, had consumed the equivalent of over a dozen planets of all the metal they had. Crewing each of these ships were millions upon millions of debased heretics, pirates, and traitors. Around each ship was a personal fleet of small attack craft: fierce locusts of iron that turned space red with their angry engine flares.

All this space faring might showed up upon Imperial sensors as a tide of crimson signatures. An ocean of blood had come to sweep the fleet away.

Armstrong looked at the signatures that designated the friendly ships. He could easily imagine, but knew it was not so, that the whole might of the Imperial navy had been brought into one concentrated pocket. From his command post upon the bridge of his ship, waiting now as a mere captain of a single ship inside a vast body of Imperial craft, he watched the empty stars, awaiting the arrival of the enemy. All around his ship, hundreds of Imperial cruisers prepared for battle, dearly hoping to stall the spear of chaos and its implacable drive towards the thumping heart of humanity.

"ALL SHIPS PREPARE TO ENGAGE!" beeped the shrill voice of the admiral of this colossal fleet over Armstrong's earpiece.


	27. First Battle of the Last Black Crusade

The warp opened up, red and glowing. The warp did not blossom at safe firing distance from the wedge of Imperial ships, but right in front of them. Evasive orders were called all across the fleet as hundreds of ships pulled away from the rift. Through portholes, sweaty ratings watched as chaos advanced, boiling out of the fires of the warp, fly thick, engines roaring, and batteries as hot as the deepest bowls of the warp itself.

The first chaos ship to emerge was a bloated cruiser scavenged from a loyal flagship. A gigantic eight-pointed star emblazoned its hull and its entire body was painted in the blood of one billion murdered laborers of the shipyard it had been captured from. This flying altar to the dark gods split in half as loyal cannon let fly into its bulk. Miniature suns blossomed across its body as the ships hide was melted and blasted by lance strikes. It was a burning log, but it was burning to ash far faster than natural wood. Flames erupted from within as more Imperial cruisers fired. Space glowed as torpedoes and laser batteries were pumped into the heretical ship. Fifty thousand pirates died in a moment as the ship exploded into a cloud of stars.

It was followed instantly by a wave of smaller cruisers that came out so quickly that not all could be fired upon. First ten, than fifty, then sixty, all in the space of a moment. Spreading out quickly like a tumor, they returned fire upon the Imperials. Their torpedo tubes emptied out even as Imperial laser weaponry found them. Some ships turned to fire and slag under a punishing storm of Imperial shot. A few, alternatively, met a death of leaping inferno at the hands of a single, well placed shot from one of the capital ships inside the gargantuan imperial fleet. Casualties for chaos only grew, ten thousand at a time, as even more cruisers emerged. They burned and exploded into spiraling wreckage under navy guns as they emerged from the warp, shooting off only a few precious shots into the Imperial Navy. Was chaos trying to batter the fleet apart under a hail of wreckage? Some younger officers even cackled fiendishly as they watched the heretics die.

However, as more cruisers added themselves to the mounting destruction, few noticed other rifts open up around the fleet. Fire was quickly redirected to these new threats and the fleet repositioned itself to best train their weapons on the enemy. But the flood of chaos ships did not stop. Punching through the barrier of their wrecked comrades, the blade-like prows of the chaos fleet tore into real space, guns burning. This time, Imperial cruisers felt the punishing blow of chaos guns.

One Sword class ship on the Imperial side erupted in fire as its engine took a deadly hit. Beautiful dark green architecture was consumed in a murderous nova that left little wreckage behind. Elsewhere, the insane captain of a burning chaos frigate smashed his ship into a much larger Imperial Navy battleship before it could evade: adding themselves to the destruction. But for every ship the Imperial Navy lost, ten chaos ships met their end by their guns. In support, space-borne fighters and bombers rose from the fighter bays of Imperial ships to join the storm, spilling out like hot bullets from a machine gun. In response, chaos fighters flocked out of the many rifts in tremendous waves. Tens, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of such craft from both sides fought in a graceful but terrible dance of war, adding their roles to this apocalyptic symphony of death.

Alas, the tide of chaos did not stop coming, and from each of the different rifts they began to pour, no longer simple warships emblazoned with improvised altars and scrawled with untidy runes to the chaos gods, but the best the despoiler could wield.

Massive ships that had been forged on daemon worlds flew forth amidst clouds of lesser ships. While the chaos craft melted to weapons fire, these mighty fliers absorbed punishment with their skins of otherworldly metals. Coloured lightning leapt from their hulls, tracing lines of fire across nearby Imperial warships. In other places were war-scarred battleships crewed by infamous traitor admirals, the mere sight of which attracted frantic shots by startled captains.

"It is the _Harpywing!" _cried one such man to the officers of his ship. "All guns! Blast that bronze ship! Avenge Trutoni!"

More daemonic ships poured from the warp, their fleshy hulls unnerving even the most ignorant rating to spot their unnatural shapes. Quickly, individual ships turned to fleets. No longer did chaos ships burst apart upon emerging from the warp: now, with the inevitability of an advancing flood, their numbers crept upwards. There was simply no stopping them.

The battle of the void was in full swing, in all ways a terrible brawl between the armored hulks of the Imperium and the powers of the warp. Ships from opposite sides flew up alongside each other, furiously exchanging fire in fatal duels. There was little room for the bewildered captains of both sides to move as more heretical ships boiled into the burning fray. Amidst all this, a leaping, swirling hailstorm of dueling fighters clashed amidst the shifting mountains of the battleships, adding a small but brutal layer to the battle that was consuming thousands of lives per second. There would be no turning back for anyone. This was a fight to the ruinous death.

…

Swooping down, their engines burning with the light of a star, the wing of bombers flew tightly in towards the hull of the daemonic frigate. Upon its surface, which looked as much like the skin of a dragon as it did the bulk of a ship, the pilots could all see a haphazard distribution of bone-white cannon alongside gigantic etchings of chaotic runes.

As the bombers swooped in, eager to add the explosions of their bombs to the firestorm that illuminated the void, one of the runes glowed red. A cry over the vox-network of the bomber wing was heard. The bomber from which the cry came veered clumsily off course, wrecking the otherwise perfect V assault formation the bombers had formed. It spiraled off into space before being caught in the monstrous crossfire. Whatever nightmare had claimed the crew of this lost craft, none of the other crews had time to guess at as they continued their punishing attack run.

A few of the ship's guns locked onto the incoming threat, spitting a hail of glowing plasma bolts at them that hurt the eyes with their intensity. The bombers evaded the shots without breaking formation. Just as they reached firing distance, one of their number exploded into a spectacular flash of spiraling debris as a plasma shot found it.

In vengeance for their lost comrades, the wing of bombers unleashed their full payloads on the ship. For every bomber that dove upon it, two lines of fire ripped across the daemonic craft. Guns burst apart, runes met oblivion, and the ship itself vibrated under the impacts, like a beast would if in pain.

But even if the whole ship was demolished, it would not be enough. There were ten others like it within a short flying distance of the bomber wing, and who knew how many others elsewhere? The Imperial Navy fought a war of attrition against this beastly chaos armada, which had degenerated into an aimless hell of fighting warships and zooming squadrons of fighters and their fearless crews.

…

The Serpent's Lair.

To Affenor, it looked like the bronze statues of twenty snakes, vipers all, standing upright on their tails, clasping an ornate fortress in their fangs. Ropes of living sepents formed chains that one needed to laboriously climb in order to reach the summit. From what he had gathered from unsuspecting mutant dregs that garrisoned the city that stretched in all directions around it like a shadow, this was where the lord of the Alpha Legion dwelt. The persisting rumor insisted that its interior was as beautiful as any of the Cadian palaces that had once stood on this defiled world. Some even said that it was this castle, which stood one kilometer in the air, that channeled the warp energy into Cadia to keep it in real space.

"How was today?" asked Odeen from below Afennor's feet. Afennor looked down into the cage below him, at the three surviving Space Wolves.

"I fear the guard I stole this uniform from may have been discovered," Afennor replied, "but I am hot on the lord's trail. By the Emperor, everyone will be avenged." He looked back out the brick window of the tower he was in. Across a sea of rough iron roofs of the mutant city, looming like a mountain in the distance, was the Serpent's Lair. "I learned that the Alpha Legion is preparing to assemble nearby. From there, they will join the rest of the traitor legions. I swear, I will kill Vashuss when he moves through the city. They will not see me until he is dead." Knowing he would not survive the shot troubled him little.

"You are as brave a scout as any I have ever met," Odeen said with a grin. "At least if you seek martyrdom, you will release us before the time comes?"

"I will," Afennor sighed, releasing his breath into the hot Cadian air and he wiped a bead of sweat from his flushed brow. Drawing back from the window, he stepped into the shade of the tower and from the heat of Cadia's hellish sun. "Though we are in the bosom of chaos, we will die in the Emperor's light. All I need to learn now is when the Alpha Legion will move."

The sound of approaching boots forced Afennor to hide. Ducking out of the window, he balanced himself on the sill and shifted to the right, just out of sight to someone inside. If he fell, he wouldn't stop for five hundred feet. Only barely did he manage to hear the words spoken inside the room.

"Come astartes dogs, we need you now!" The sound of the cell door opening reached Afennor's ears. "Do as we say, or your shrunken heads will decorate our banner…" Afennor pictured Vashuss with a banner crowned by the defiled heads of noble Space Wolves. The imagery drove him mad.

Leaping inside, Afennor swung a wide punch into the scaled face of the mutant guard he came face to face with. Bone retreated from his fist, shattering like glass under the scout's superhuman strike. Nine other mutants stood in the room, their scaled hides suggesting the skin of vipers, their long ragged uniforms were made of alien leather, and a few of them sprouted horns atop their bald scalps. Had they been training their autoguns anywhere other than the door to the cell, they might have simply gunned down Afennor as he attacked.

When Afennor leapt in, the squad of guards turned their heads as one to give astounded looks to the young man in the remnants of a renegade's outfit. Foolishly, a few of them moved their guns towards Afennor, who was already lifting the man he had dropped back to his shaky feet. The Space Wolves took this opportunity.

"For Russ!" Odeen bellowed as he hurled himself from the cell. In hands that could split the back of an ox, Odeen took two mutants by the skull and hurled them at their compatriots. Behind Odeen, the other two warriors of Leman Russ raced forward from their unlocked cell, leaping up and brawling with the heretics. Afennor scooped up a fallen autogun while using the mutant he had stood up as a shield, clasping his neck in a vice and presenting him as the man fought uselessly to ecape.

An autogun shot rang out, then another. Afennor felt the man in his hand shudder and go limp. Afennor responded with his own weapon, loosing a string of shots into the heretic who had dared fire at him. Around him, the Space Wolves had beaten most of the mutants to the floor while grappling with others. One mutant lay on his face, his head beneath his body. Another lay on his back: a growing pool of red expanding from his broken skull. Though the Space Wolves could wrestle with two men at once, they were still outnumbered sorely enough for the guards to get off a few more shots from their guns. As Odeen flattened a mutant's skull by bashing him over the head with his own autogun, one of the heretics trained his iron sights onto his breast.

"My lord!" yelled one of the grizzled space marines, leaping in front of Odeen.

"Death to the False Emperor!" cried the mutant, loosing a line of shots from his crude weapon. Afennor and Odeen turned their autoguns on the man at once, both killing the mutant and sending him to hell at the same time, but it wasn't enough to save the marine. The grizzled warrior's chest and neck exploded with blood and his body leaked crimson fiercely as he collapsed painfully to the floor, never again to rise.

Odeen and Afennor swept the room with their autoguns, spraying the last of the mutants with lead. Their brief fight ended, and Afennor set to collecting fallen ammunition. He did not approach the dead marine, nor take part in the prayer that both Odeen and his battle-brother spoke over the body. It was not his place as an Ultramarine, not unless they invited him.

"Come," Odeen said, turning his stony face to the door, his fangs bared like a starved beast, his mangey hair a mess from the fight and his beard still spattered with the dark blood of mutants. "Chaos will pay for this with ten thousand lives." Behind his hairy face, Afennor could see the unbridaled rage that made the men of his chapter so fearsome in combat. Afennor suddenly felt extremely young looking into the ancient, scar-branded face.

"We need to escape into the city before the others find out. I've been around there. We'll blend in, most of the people living in the city have never even seen a space marine, a true space marine," Afennor looked out the window. "I think we can make it to the Serpent's Lair." Odeen grumbled doubtfully.

"We can kill these Emperor hated dregs with our bare hands. And we will! But the Serpent's Lair is a fortress guarded by warriors as worthy as us. We cannot harm that damned place. By Russ, I want to tear it apart with my bare hands. But even the bravest warrior cannot fight beyond his strength."

"Not to assault it," Afennor replied. "Vashuss is going to join his forces." Afennor looked at Odeen. "I plan to be there when he slithers out of that place. If we are warriors worthy of the Imperium, we cannot back away from this opportunity." Odeen's face lit up, but not in happiness. A savage glee, full of fangs and bloodlust, coloured his shabby features. He snarled and laughed.

"A warrior can ask for no better death," he began, "then to die with your fingers around your enemy's throat and your teeth in his jugular!" A moment later, they were gone.

…

The battle in space raged on. The wrecks of hundreds of ships littered the battlefield, flaming and shedding house-sized chunks of twisted scrap that proved fatal to dozens of Imperial and chaos pilots who zipped their sleek wings of fighters through the celestial contest of destructive strength of the chaos fleets versus unshakable resolve of the defenders.

Yet still chaos ships came.

The _Iron Flail _had been one of the most feared ships during the Maelstrom Crusade, fighting alongside the Red Corsairs as they battled the Lamenters. Its guns had leveled cities and burned millions of innocent humans to dust. In a smaller engagement, it would be the only target for a captain who was on the hunt for trophies.

In the middle of this chaos however, the _Iron Flail _met an ignomous end at the hands of a pair of smaller Imperial frigates, though not before its guns had felled five battleships of the navy.

Then, despite the chaos, a third fleet was upon them.

"Sir!" shouted one of Armstrong's lieutenants. "Sir, we have new contacts emerging port side!" Armstrong looked upon the holodisplay and his heart skipped a beat.

Swooping in, as graceful as a hummingbird in flight but as deadly as a falcon, an entire armada of glassy eldar ships, whose alien cannon fired stars into the bloated hulls of the mismatched chaos fleet. The lithe alien craft swooped in, dancing amidst the dueling ships, their precise guns hitting the chaos ships in the engines and in the bridges to make the absolute most of their every shot. Along with the Imperial Navy, they heaped death upon the servants of the warp.

"Shall we fire on them?" asked an officer as Armstrong watched one of the eldar ships shatter under chaos fire. As heroic as the eldar were being, it was costing them dearly. While they swept into the midst of the chaos ships, slaughtering the heretics by the dozens, their own craft were split apart far more easily than what the Imperial Navy could sustain.

"There may be no point," muttered Armstrong. Through the wreckage, he could certainly see the chaos fleet had been brought below optimum strength and were now shrinking in size at last after hours of killing. Did that mean they won? Could the Imperial Navy now take the fight and the vast armies of the Imperial Guard to the eight daemon worlds themselves?

…

"Hurry," Afennor whispered to Odeen as they hurried through the streets towards the Serpent's Lair, still far on the horizon. "The ship is here!"

…

The ship was in the shape of an imperial frigate, indeed, it once had been such a ship before falling into the Alpha Legion's hands. Even its golden eagle still shone out from the starboard flank of the ship, staring helplessly down from its perch at the multitudes of slums that stretched across the raped Cadian landscape. The prow of the ship was the most changed. Its sharpened tip was replaced by a nest of draconic heads, forged from thousands of tones of steel ripped from the mines of a dozen conquered worlds. The heads, nine in total, brought to mind the blasphemous insignia of the Alpha Legion itself. In the open jaws of each of these beasts was the barrel of one of the ship's many cannons.

"Everyone is already aboard, lord," Paskatera assured Vashuss as the two stepped out of the umbilical and into the docked ship. Vashuss passed a window and peered out it. The Serpent's Lair covered most of the view, but from thie perch, he could see the millions of mutants clustered around the bottom of the frigate like a writhing ocean. So much like a swarm of maggots they were: rioting and pushing, perhaps even murdering, to be the closest to Vashuss' ship.

"Heads three and six have been assigned to remain here, then?" Vashuss asked as his superhuman gaze picked up the sight of a column of green and white armored warriors standing amongst the sea. They were like an island: unbroken as the waters of lesser men lashed about them. Upon their heads were iron horns to mimick the daemons they worshipped. Their armor was encrusted with the sigils of the chaos pantheon. Many even sported mutations. These warriors, whose souls were irreversibly dedicated to chaos, were troops of either the sixth or third head.

"They are some of our best fighters," Paskatera contradicted. "Warriors of the third include men who fought in the Black Crusades. The eldest of their champions remember such men as Lord Ahraeb, chosen of Khorne…"

"I know the roster of champions that those heads boast," Vashuss interrupted. "It is for their devotion that they remain. Cadia cannot fall to Imperial hands. They are our best, our most devoted to chaos, and it shall be to they where I place my greatest trust." Vashuss turned to Paskatera. "Do not worry, young one, I do not forget your own devotion to the dark gods. Though you may be no less devout than the others, I need you when we go to Camlan."

"You will, I say, you WILL give me lives to end, blood to spill. I will not stand by like a lamb while Khorne feasts from the gifts of others!" Paskatera snarled hotly, almost prompting Vashuss to restrain him. As the frigate lifted off, Paskatera raised his Khorne-blessed axe above his head. "Blood, Vashuss, I am not to command from the rear."

"You will get all the death you want, Paskatera. By the time the trap is sprung, you will be drenched in it," Vashuss promised as he and Paskatera strode through the dark hallways of the frigate. The hallways were intentionally kept pitch black. The superhumans of the Alpha Legion had nothing to fear from the darkness, which their eyes pierced. Petty intruders and other such invaders would, on the other hand, not always have the same advantages.

"What is this trap you keep referring to?" Paskatera demanded sharply.

"We shall use it to slaughter the Imperials," replied Vashuss as they walked through the blackness.

"What are the details…"

"The assembly room is ahead," said Vashuss. "Take your place."

The frigate was shaking now, its engines bursting it into space. Unsure footing would send a man sprawling in a head to the vibrating ground. Vashuss paid no heed to the earthquake that shook the ship as he reached the end of the hall and pushed the door open. Like an adder's jaws, the door yawned apart to reveal a colossal chamber beyond: the assembly room.

"By the warp," Paskatera muttered as he looked around.

The room was large enough to house a small town. Columns, carved to resemble rearing serpents, supported the roof. The chamber itself was not fat like a pig, but long like a boa. Upon its walls were painted scenes of the legion's victories. Paskatera had seen the chamber before: it was what was in it that brought out his amazement. Inside, the entirety of the Alpha Legion who had not remained on Cadia. Were this ship to break apart, the legion would be doomed to extinction. Perhaps eight thousand men were present, filling the chamber from wall to wall, armed to the teeth, their thorned armor was dull and gloomy from Paskatera's perspective. They stood below him: below the platform the door pened up onto.

"Hydra Dominatus!" came a roar from the rear of the chamber, echoing through the vaulted room. The cry was repeated by thousands of voices. Paskatera was about to join in the chanting of the legion's warcry when he spotted Vashuss glaring at him. Paskatera assumed his place in the chamber, hurrying down stairs from the platform and taking his place amongst the first ranks.

"Warriors!" Vashuss yelled, "we go now to join our true brothers upon the field of battle! Abaddon's forces will soon descend upon Camlan, there to construct a tower that will turn Terra into a daemon world. The Imperial sheep will try to herd him off. And they shall fail, we will see to that personally if we must! Hydra Dominatus!" Paskatera enthusiastically repeated the cry with the rest of his proud legion.

"The dark gods will feast upon the universe! Hydra Dominatus!" The cry went up again.

"And the galaxy will become as it was meant to be: a paradise of the warp. Hydra Dominatus!" Paskatera was now laughing with anticipation of battle as he repeated the cheer from his legion.

"And we will be as immortal as the daemons themselves. Hydra Dominatus!" Paskatera joined the cry as it rose again. Vashuss crossed his arms and inexplicably paused. Paskatera stood in the empty silence that followed, squeezing his axe and waiting for his lord's next words.

"So remember," Vashuss said, his voice calmer than the preachy voice he had used. "The Imperials will not anticipate the trap. But when it is sprung, the faithless will be routed and slaughtered and their blood sent straight to Khorne. Hydra Dominatus!" Paskatera echoed the cry as loudly as he could, only to realize he'd been the only one who had done so. He glared at Vashuss and squeezed the handle of his axe, feeling insulted. Vashuss raised his bolter above his head, barrel pointed to the ceiling. "Our time approaches!" he laughed, "the Time of Ending is upon us. Soon, it shall pass and our time will arrive. Hydra Dominatus!" Paskatera heard the cry repeated throughout the chamber as the Alpha Legion jubilantly raised their weapons into the air.

…

The cargohold was a maze of stacked crates, high quality safes, forged of steel, forming cities of metal cubes throughout the lightless depths of the Alpha Legion ship. In them were all the supplies the traitors would need to make their lengthy voyage to Terra, or to wherever they were bound.

"Vashuss must be on this ship," Afennor whispered as he opened the lid on one of the boxes and climbed inside. "This one's empty," he remarked.

"A few of them are," replied Odeen. He was amazed at how small a space the young scout could squirm into. Odeen secretly envied this feat and could conjure up dozens of sitiuations, fighting the enemies of Russ, when such an ability could have saved lives. "How long can we hide in their cargo hold before they discover us?" Odeen looked across one of the boxes and opened its lid. Inside was paper-wrapped meat. Much of it. Nibbling a bit, Odeen's mind filled with visions of a burning planet. Looking closer, he spotted a human skull lying amidst the contents. He discarded the piece and said a short prayer.

"Such savages these men are, no honour," Odeen said as he looked back to the box Afennor was in. "I will not hide in a…hello?" Afennor was gone.

"What?" Afennor called down from the top of a pile of boxes, his rifle in hand. With a dirty rag, he was cleaning the weapon. "You asked about how long we're to be here?" Afennor's face hardened and he looked through his rifle's scope. "As much time as I need to find their lord."

He dry-fired his rifle.


	28. Vashuss is Shipwrecked

Armstrong put his hand over his face, wiping away the sweat. The timely intervention of the eldar had cost the aliens their lives: not a single eldar ship remained. They drifted now, shards of glass amidst a manmade asteroid belt of wrecked hulks, silent martyrs in the endless war against chaos. This grand sacrifice had rescued the fleet from much destruction. Though fully half of the invincible armada now lay silent and drifting, the Imperial Navy had won what could have been the greatest space battle since the Horus Heresy. Some of the ratings aboard his ship were being sent to the infirmary because of exhaustion. Even the officers were too tired to celebrate. The heretics were destroyed, the warp rifts were gone.

For now. Even Armstrong knew they still had to support the invasion fleets. This armada would quickly split apart and head to their respective fleet to invade the daemon worlds of the despoiler.

"Commander," bleeped a voice over his earpiece, "we have our coordinates. We're to support the fleet attacking world 04, held by the Iron Warriors. And the high general offers his heartfelt congratu…" Armstrong turned off his earpiece and gasped with exhaustion. Not another battle.

…

It was here that the Legions were assembled. Abaddon gazed out across the landscape at the gathered might of the chaos space marines. Glistening tanks shone brightly under the hellish sky. Bleached horns rose from every helmet. Accursed banners flailed in the razor-sharp wind of the daemon world. It seemed imposible that this force of only a few ten thousand would bring about the end of the immesuarable Imperium, but they were chaos!

Turning from the window to the interior of the black cathedral, Abaddon beheld Ahriman, hurrying up towards him, disturbing his solitary moment.

"What?" demanded the Despoiler, his inhuman voice filling the chamber.

"Forgive my intrusion, but when do we depart?" asked Ahriman.

"When we are all here, Thousand Son," replied Abaddon lazily. "I know what concerns your tiny mind, Ahriman, but you must uncover your eyes and behold the greater plan." Abaddon turned back to the window.

"My lord, you have surely heard the whispers…"

"I know that Tzeench is deteriorating. War and mutation is destroying all of the mortals across the galaxy's domains, but you will turn your mind from this and return it to me, to my enterprise. The dark gods will be rejuvenated, all, when the Emperor is corrupted and the galaxy is as it should be." Abaddon fumed when Ahriman spoke again.

"We must hurry, my lord, for the hours are not kind to us. Tzeench…"

"Not another word of this prattle. We will solve this concern in the time it takes to conquer Terra."

"My lord, chaos weakens as the Imperium does…"

"I said not another word, Ahriman," Abaddon spat, "soon we will be gone from this place."

…

It flew through space, nine heads reaching forward, frozen in a fierce snarl, barreling towards the daemon world ahead of them. It was not alone. Like ravenous toothfish assaulting a much larger basking fish with all the ferocity of a wolf, the wing of eldar fighters swept along the body of the chaos ship, their pulsars throwing shot after shot into its burning hull. Cannon mounted upon the ship's breadth fought furiously to ward of the wasp swarm of eldar fighters to litte success, only forcing the pilots to fly more cautiously.

An orange explosion bloomed on the chaos ship's engines, sending it spiraling to the world below, a tail of fire following shortly behind. The eldar ships darted in once more. From the world itself came a bolt of blue energy that sprawled across one of the unfortunate eldar craft and brought it apart in a nova of white fire. The survivors fled from their downed prey.

…

"Eldar cowards, why won't they come down and fight us, tooth and claw!" Paskatera bellowed as he stepped out of the wreck where it had come to rest in the snowy wilderness. Great banks of snow had been ploughed up by the frigate's gentle crash. About the fallen hulk was a steppe of pearly snow beneath a grey sky. The whirling wind threw up such a blizzard that now even Paskatera could see through it. "Damnation, how will we reach our allies under Chaos?"

"Calm your hot temper, lord Paskatera," replied Vashuss with his damnable calm as he emerged out of the open door behind Paskatera. He paused to inspect his troops, who rushed out into the snowy haze to establish a perimerter.

"My lord," blared one of them, "the land is flat. The ship is not damaged greatly, but raising her will take time."

"Is this Krieg?" Vashuss asked.

"It is my lord." The traitor astartes retreated back into the blizzard. Paskatera squinted as the wind grew fiercer and walked aside to let a wall of Alpha Legion warriors pass.

"Damned eldar," he cursed as he leaned against the cliff-like side of the frigate.

"My lord!" came a cry from the snow around them. Paskatera could not spot the source of concern, nor the man who'd spoken, and squinted to look past the silhouetted marines and through the washing cloud of blowing snow that surrounded the downed frigate. He raised his axe when scores of pairs of cold blue lights lit up the blizzard around them. Paskatera's head was filled with vile whispers: thoughts of the daemon bound to his axe.

'Blood for the blood god, kill. Blood for the blood god, kill…' Paskatera was mildly disappointed when shapes appeared behind each of the pairs of lights, revealing each pair to be the eyes of a warrior of Tzeench. Most of them appeared to be helmeted men in gas masks, with thick coats that hung to their knees. Across their rugged bodies were written messages that exhalted Tzeench. Not a line of their skin showed. Their glowing blue eyes matched the lights in the eyes of the dozen Thousand Sons who were with them. Appearing from a nova of ice blue energy was Ahriman himself, appearing in front of Vashuss.

"At last you come, by Tzeench's will" Ahriman said, "come, I will whisk you away. Abaddon is displeased with your sloth." His voice, which was normally calm with calculation, spoke quickly.

"Eldar are near Kreig," Vashuss remarked.

"They are nuisances. The wrath of the Imperium will be here soon, so my divination has proved," Ahriman replied. "My magics will make the journey swift. We must depart this wretched land soon." Paskatera grinned and squeezed his axe, his mind filling with visions of battlefields on Terra, strewn with the bloodied bodies of his kills. These visions were not his own thoughts.

"And I will…" Paskatera was interrupted by a terrific crash from behind him, coming from within the ship. Fearing an explosion, he rushed inside. In the main hallway he saw an Alpha Legion warrior wrestling with a dirtied young man, not likely older than one quarter of a century. The boy wore a ragged flak jacket and struggled over a chainsword with the chaos marine. Upon the floor lay, of all things, an Adeptus Astartes issue sniper rifle. Paskatera's surpise stopped even his bloodlust as Vashuss joined him to watch the struggle. The larger Alpha Legion warrior held an advantage over the smaller, though very well muscled youth and would clearly gain the chainsword, bending the weapon down to come closer to the other man's head. It was over in a flash. The other man jumped to the side and snatched a knife from his belt. The temptered blade plunged into the chaos marine's throat, tempting a fountain of crimson out of his neck. Again and again it went in before the marine crumpled to the ground in a disgraced pile. The young man rose his eyes to the doorway, now filled with two lords and five lesser chaos marines.

"I'll kill you Vashuss!" the lonely boy spat as he went for his rifle. Paskatera was on him first, striking him in the head with the blunt end of his axe's handle, knocking him out cold to the floor. He rose the axe above his head, madness rising inside him, but found Vashuss' serpents had writhed their way around his weapon, stilling it.

"So there was an assassin," he remarked, looking down. "Cobrauss, Isckavinel, fetch a cage for this one." Paskatera clenched his teeth like a beast.

"We have no time for prisoners!" yelled Paskatera.

"Relax. We might learn something from him."

"We're going to Terra!"

"Then we take him with us. And don't forget his rifle." Vashuss squinted at the fallen youth. "He looks familiar."


	29. The Stranger that Usoran Saw

The fleet that moved over the world that had once been Krieg was as vast a fleet as any that anyone in the thunderhawk had ever served beside. Over one hundred ships, with thousands of troop transports and perhaps millions of fighting men in their sprawling metal bellies, drifted like clouds over the world below them. Proud imperial symbols stuck defiantly out against the crushing depths of space, challenging the unholy world below them. Prows shaped like eagles, beautiful spites atop the larger battleships and long, carved cannon were what the fleet presented to the pale ball below them. Amongst the fleet were battleships from three space marine chapters. These were the Raven Guard, the Space Wolves, and the Dark Angels. Of the Dark Angel ships, there was only a single small escort craft. From its ancient launch tube had come Usoran's thunderhawk.

"Are you sure this is the proper course of action?" asked Brother librarian Jailarian to Usoran. "Perhaps it would be best to consult first with inquisitorial reports."

"My dreams have been…clear. I hate to say it, but they are what promise me this place," replied Usoran. Under any other circumstances, he would be investigated. But the sword that had since replaced his chainsword, the sword of Cypher, had been extensively examined by the chapter and by the inquisiton. It was pure and there was mounting evidence that it was indeed the Lion Sword as Usoran believed.

"Since you picked up that sword, you have spoken of visions," Brother Ryanson said from the back. "How do you know that what you see is not Tzeench himself?" Usoran fingered the hilt of the sword, of the Lion Sword. He was sure of it.

"My faith is in the Emperor. And were this blade cursed, I might have reason to doubt the words I have heard," Usoran looked at Ryanson. "Brother, these are my orders. We are to land in the northlands of Krieg, where my dream told me I would find a prize. Do not doubt that." Ryanson sighed as the thunderhawk entered the daemon world's clouds and entered into a punishing dive to the surface. Usoran's stomach lurched and his hearts raced.

"Dark angels," Usoran spoke, "lord we offer our lives."

"Our courage and our faith," rumbled the thunderhawk's compartment as the Dark Angels replied together.

"By our gods and our Emperor," said Usoran. Over the speakers, Usoran heard the pilot warn him that a crashed ship had been sighted on the coordinates that Usoran had passed to him

"So be it the day," finished the others. Usoran patted his sword, it had to have been Lion El'Jonson's in the past, and prepared to rise up. With a shake, the thunderhawk landed, the distant pops of its guns laying suppressive fire across the snow, which quickly stopped when no shots were returned from behind the blizzard. The hatch opened and the two squads of marines raced out, bolters raised. Usoran was last out, emerging into the blasting snow, his face growing cold, his hair whipping around his head like a halo, his eyes stung by the lashing flakes of the world's snow. He spat when some of it dribbled onto his lips. This damned cold bit right through his power armor. He'd be shivering next.

"North clear."

"South clear."

"West clear."

"My lord, our scanners pick up no signs of life," reported the sergeant of second squad. All eyes turned to the fallen starship. It was, or had been, a sword class frigate. Even under all the evil chaos insignias, it was still recognizable. The hallmarks of imperial architecture shone through it like a candle in a heretical temple. To explore the whole thing could potentially take days.

"Come brothers," said the librarian over the snow, "let us probe the depths of this beast." The natural entry point was a gash in the side of the ship that they had landed beside. As one, the two squads filed in. Usoran regarded his blade and shook his head, sending snow from his hair, which was quickly replaced.

'"Brothers, I must see to the thunderhawk," Usoran said as he returned to the ship. There was something about the snow, in that patch right there by the thunderhawk's port landing gears. Judging by the depression in it, something was there. Usoran approached the slight depression and reached his powered fingers in and lifting forth a shard of a type of pearly metal. It was hot despite the weather, very hot, hot enough to melt the snow. Looking over the splinter of pearly metal, Usoran quickly noticed another depression. In front of the thunderhawk. A search yielded more metal.

"Brothers…" the two squads were gone. He searched the area, uncovering more and more depressions, further and further from the crashed chaos ship and the thunderhawk. It was then when he made his discovery.

Deep in a nest of in snow, its features half hidden by a curtain of white, lay the rear elements of an eldar bomber. It had been there for as long as the chaos ship: potentially a few weeks or even months. Usoran discarded the hot metal: a fragment of the ship, and approached the craft's remnants. The most prominent features were the two sweeping fans that reached our from the tail. The craft's pearly colour made it all but invisible against the snow. Blood coloured jewels lay in patterns across its sleek frame. She was beautiful even in death. There was no sign of the cockpit.

As Usoran approached the wreck he blinked and there was suddenly a man sitting atop it. He wore a black cloak and a black hood with black boots and matching gloves. His face was hidden by a mask. There was only darkness looking back from behind those eyeholes. He was sitting on one of those beautiful fans, his feet hanging down, and his body was shaking as though sobbing. His head was sunken.

"Stranger?" Usoran called, his instincts warning him against tricks. "I am Usoran…" The man looked at him, his shaking stopped. Usoran found himself breathless before that eyeless stare. To meet twin pools of void was worse than the hottest stare. "Are you eldar?" Silence. "The primarch Lion El'Jonson has led me here. Do you know why?" The man leapt down and shifted through the snow. Usoran readied himself, but the stranger walked right by him, leading him to the Alpha Legion ship. After walking one score meters alone, the stranger looked back at Usoran as if asking him to follow. Usoran found himself complying.

"The primarch appeared to me as an angel, stranger," Usoran said once they reached the Alpha Legion ship. Both entered it through a small hatch. "Stranger, why have I come here?" Usoran still got no answer as the stranger led him through the halls. "Are you Lion El'Jonson?" Usoran asked abruptly. The stranger stopped, looked into Usoran's eyes, and shook his head. "Can you speak?"

[i]"Yehn Ay Yad,"[/i] The voice came from far off.

"What does that mean, stranger?"

[i]"Yehn Ay Yad,"[/i]

"Is it all you can say?" Usoran squinted at the man's mask. "Can you take off your mask and let me see your face?" The stranger shook his head and led Usoran deeper into the ship. They once had to pass a fallen chaos marine, his throat cut open. The stranger paused to stomp on the corpse's helmet in disrespect before continuing on.

"Will you come with me to my fleet, stranger?" Usoran asked as they came into a room filled with collapsed crates, their silver skins were grey in the dark. "If you are an enemy of chaos, you are better with us." Again, the stranger shook his head. "Do you not want my trust? You can understand me but say nothing. You wear a mask like a pariah. What are you?" The last words were forceful. When the stranger stopped and turned to Usoran, the Dark Angel drew his sword and held it defensively. "Please stranger, I want answers. I will go no further until."

In response, the stranger drew his own sword, lifting it out of a flap in his cloak even though it could not logically fit beneath it. It was long and made of grey metal. It lacked a crossguard or finger guards. The splinter shape of its blade brought a shattered bone to mind, as did the eloquent runes woven into the blade's metal. Its pommel was crafted to look like a skull. He held it aloft, parallel to the floor.

"For the Emperor…" Usoran's warcry fell short when he realized the stranger was not threatening him, but pointing the blade at something amidst the boxes. Usoran shifted over to the place where the stranger pointed, not taking his eyes from him, before sniffing the scent of warm human flesh.

"Help, I hear you…" came a rasping voice beneath a pile of crates. Beneath it, Usoran discovered a bulky man with a wild beard, dressed only in a loincloth. His body carried more scars than Usoran's. His teeth were long and pointed. "Brother marine…" the bulky man laughed. "That I should get rescued by a Dark Angel…" The man grinned at Usoran through his beard and there was some light in his purple-bruised eyes.

"You're a space marine," Usoran said. "A Space Wolf. I am Brother Captain Usoran of the Dark Angels."

"We've met. I am Odeen. My kinsman lies nearby. We have a lot to talk about. How did you find me?" When Usoran looked behind himself, he saw no sign of the stranger. Even when he searched the chamber after calling his brother marines in, he found no sign of him. They found another Space Wolf, but no sign of the stranger.

"You were away from your squads," Odeen remarked again as they flew back to the fleet a few hours later. He sat with the Dark Angels, though his companion carried more injuries and could not sit. "Why? Did you know I was there? You never answered my question."

"There was someone else down there," Usoran replied. He looked at his sword, now innocently by his side. "Perhaps I must just be content to know that there are things I may never understand."

"I know much about the enemy's plans. My companion, a scout named Afennor Zodan of the Ultramarines, spied on the Alpha Legion while we hid, looking for their lord," Odeen explained. Usoran nodded.

"I can now see why I was led there," he muttered.

"The lord he hunted, Vashuss of the Alpha Legion, slew the Black Tomb. I do not know where Afennor is now."

…

Afennor was aboard a chaos ship, one of dozens, which had just entered warp space and was presently catapulting murderously towards an unsuspecting Terra. Inside each was a vast army of the dark god's finest, the champions of chaos, and the heralds of the end of mortals. With them was Abaddon and all the daemon primarchs.


	30. Jungle of Death

Catachan.

Once the planet had used the name, once it had been a bulkhead of Imperial power. Now it was a plague infested hellscape of Nurgle's whims, swarming with daemons. Its clouds were ash, its rough landscape was choked in decaying vegetation, and unholy citadels dotted its noxious surface. It was defended by heretics, organized into groups that were more numerous than the flies over a mound of carrion. And it fell to the Imperial Guard to defeat them.

The might of the Imperial Navy hovered above the daemon world, its battleships locked in ship-to-ship battles with the disparate fleets of renegade ships that guarded the planet's atmosphere. Alongside this, troop transports streaked down towards the surface accompanied by whirling warheads to depopulate the landing zones.

As the troop ships touched down into the deserts that the bombs had left, the ground suddenly came alive. Even as fleets of grounded ships disgorged thousands of men and vehicles, a fetid jungle sprouted up into being around them, stalling the transports and bathing every man in a shrouded wilderness of daemonic jungle. This happened on every landing zone without exception, no matter how fierce the bombing runs had been. It would seem Nurgle would not let the guard fight anywhere but in his diseased jungle.

Were the guard forces not prepared, they would have immediately died from breathing the soupy air. But their masks and breather units kept them alive. As they fanned out through the jungle, gaping in awe and fear at the leering faces that stared at them from thorny tree trunks or praying as they passed by fleshy ferns, the forces of Nurgle fought back.

"Major," whispered Vaetas into his headset, "clear. No enemy contact…"

"AH!"

The startled trooper turned to the source of the noise: an unlucky trooper had been slain by a taloned vine. Daemonic plantlife attacks had been killing troopers on every landing zone, so Vaetas had heard. He snapped his gloved fingers and ordered the survivors to fall in to him. He looked at the fallen trooper: lying amidst a patch of skull-headed flowers.

"Once more, through the jungle and link up with…" Vaetas interrupted himself, shooting a snakey vine from the air as it lashed towards him and his squad mates.

"This jungle will kill us all," grumbled one of the masked troopers: Vaetas couldn't tell who was who in this light and in these dehumanizing uniforms.

Lasfire behind them caught their attention. The lonely lasgun shot might have been retaliation against an attacking vine, but this was a hail of shots without end.

"Platoon 2, requesting reinforcements. Daemons!" blared a terrified voice over Vaetas' headset. He would have complied, had one of his men not doubled over, choking.

"Oh…Emperor, I don't feel so good…" the trooper was grabbing at his helmet and gagging. Vaetas swore he was about to vomit and nearly warned him against removing his mask. But the man dropped his lasgun and fell onto the ground and tore off his mask before Vaetas could speak. His face was grey and his hair was turning white. Green tumors were pushing themselves up out of his skin and black bile began to issue out of his open mouth. Vaetas stood spellbound, ignorant to the lasfire, just watching the horror in sickly fascination. The trooper, Vaetas recognized him as old-man Olec, the veteran, was yawning his mouth wide open, his jaw stretching down unnaturally as something tore it downwards. Then, from the ink that filled Olec's mouth, crawled a hideous daemon, bloated and giggling, its leathery hide coated black by the unholy ichtor.

Vaetas and his platoon opened fire on it as Olec's stomach erupted open. Spilling forth in a hot cocktail of blood and black ink, was a writhing nest of the things. Crawling from the torn ruins of his guts and laughing as lasrounds tore into them. Some of them were hit and popped like balloons, disappearing from reality as their fleshy bodies burst apart, but others squirmed through the lasfire and opened bat-like wings. A few of them leapt up at the guardsmen, their wings carrying them up with frightening speed.

"Get this thing off me!"

"Ah! Get it off me! Someone, help!" Their tiny claws were worthless against guard flak jackets. But as writhing troopers slashed at them with their bayonettes, the daemon's needle claws pierced their masks and tore at their breather units, tearing them from men's faces. Vaetas saw the panicking faces of his friends as the masks came off. He saw their primal fear turn to dizzied exhaustion almost immediately. They dropped to the floor as the daemons jumped from their bodies to find new victims. Mackarenner, Neshult, and Gaskeran all turned grey as they began to writhe. As the last daemons exploded under lasfire, these troopers began to bleed black ichtor, from their eyes and ears and mouths and nostrils.

"Emperor, no," one of the survivors wept, "not again…" he sprinted through the jungle and only made it a few meters before a fleshy vine grabbed him and dragged him screaming into the shadows. The sound of ripping flesh followed.

"The Emperor protects!" cried Vaetas as his comrades burst apart like pussing blisters as yet more daemons stormed forth. Vaetas retreated through the jungle to dodge a leaping daemon. Through darkness of the jungle and the treetrunks, he could see the others. Each man had at least five daemons on him. Through the lasfire and commotion, he could hear men screaming and daemons giggling. Vaetas retreated back towards his lander, towards the silence.

The silence? The lasfire behind him had abated.

"Vaetas…Vaetas…my…my men are down," he sputtered, barely keeping himself together from the shock. "I…I need help. Please." His call for help was not answered by the stony voice of his colonel or the gentle voice of the coms officer, not even by the unforgiving voice of his commissar. It was instead answered by a shrill din of laughing daemons. They blanketed the jungle, covering all beneath their rotting forms. Most of them had shaken off the blood and ink that had covered them, showing their ugly bodies. They were like living mounds of dead flesh that split in random places to show ropy organs and nests of hungry white maggots. They were not coming after him: they were coming towards him, from the lander's direction.

Vaetas turned around, shocked to silence, only to confront a new, greater horror that had somehow crept up behind him. He could only describe it as a corpulent mound that looked like a corpse. It was fifteen feet tall and sprouted antlers. Its skin was green, its exposed guts were grey, and it was covered by a film of squirming maggots with tiny human faces. Amongst those faces, Vaetas saw the tortured faces of his newly dead friends, and of friends in other units who had followed him to this evil place. The monster opened it's mouth hungrily and snatched him with fat fingers.

"Die! Die! Die!" Vaetas shrieked hysterically, firing madly to no effect, as the monster lifted him into its open jaws.

…

The jungle was on fire. The column of leman russ tanks advanced through it, crushing trees and daemonic plant life as the hellhounds bathed the land in a cyclone of inferno. The swarms of giggling daemons before them exploded beneath the armored assault as it drove through the jungle. Behind them marched hundreds of guardsmen who had been spared the horrors of the plague that had decimated many of the other landing zones. Even as they cleared through the next patch of jungle, they came upon another landing zone. Its lander was wreathed in more creep than could gave grown in a month and the ground was caked in the rotten debris of thousands of guardsmen. Over them swarmed those pathetic little daemons. It all went up in flame.

"Narle?" asked Colonel Krymm down to his coms officer. "Radio command. Drop point 5 is gone."

"Yes," replied Narle from her vox-set below him inside his command salamander. Krymm looked back up and across the jungle hell he had been dropped into. Little sunlight pierced these black clouds. Scanning his armored regiment for signs of the enemy or worse, he waited for Narle to reply.

'This blasted jungle keeps growing back,' he thought as he watched a patch of burned ferns restore themselves. He snapped he head around when he heard a lasgun shoot. A tree, freshly regrown, had grabbed a man with its whip-like brambles. The shot had come from the unfortunate man, a sergeant. He'd killed himself with his laspistol.

"Sir?" Narle reached up to the hatch from the salamander's belly and slapped Krymm's leg, "command is telling me that only ourselves and drop point 8 remain." Krymm flinched. That was impossible. Fifty thousand men just gone like that?

"Radio the eighth and tell them to…"

Abruptly, the jungle came alive. Suddenly, streaking in on them from all sides, were teams and teams of heretics, clad in rags that covered their whole bodies. Three-fingered hands held an assortment of weaponry, including stolen lasguns. Their heads were all that showed. Sunken eyes, warty skin, pallid faces, drooping jaws, and tattooed symbols of Nurgle were all that stared back at Krymm from these...whatever they were. They were so gaunt that he did not find it easy to believe them still living.

From the shadows they fell on the infantry units. The whole orderly formation turned into a savage bloodletting. Knives and hacked men apart, ripping apart flak jackets and the meat beneath. When these strange heretics were slain by guardsmen, they did not bleed. Heavy bolter shots rained on them from the leman russ tanks, tearing some clean in two or exploding heads. But not a drop of crimson leapt from them.

From the deep shadows, rockets began to hiss forth at the tanks. Guardsmen and heretic were blown to shrapnel or shredded to fleshy ribbons as these rockets hit home. Krymm looked up and down his column and saw more than five tanks already ablaze. One leman russ lost its turret to a heretical rocket, one hellhound burst into flame before it could shoot its weapons. And still more rockets came. Bloodless heretics poured ever onwards from the shadows, their boots trampling wounded guardsmen slowly to death. Someone tried to climb up into Krymm's salamander. Krymm tried to help the guardsman up, his spirit enduring the man's shrieks. Something was holding him back. When the man was pulled aboard, he was dead: cut in half at the chest.

"Radio command!" Krymm shrieked down at Narle as he drew his laspistol and shot a bloodless enemy in the forehead as he pulled himself up. The man, or corpse, had no pupils and fell silently away as brain matter shot in a jet out from the back of his head. A grenade was tossed in. Krymm threw it out.

"What shall I say?" shouted Narle over the din as the grenade's blast shook the salamander.

"We've been overrun…"

Both Krymm and Narle were reduced to bony shrapnel as a pair of rockets found their way through their salamander's armor.

…

"All our landing zones on the daemon world are overrun," said the commissar lord to the general as the staff reviewed the last frantic reports from the surface before contact was lost. Not a single landing zone remained. All the brave men and women sent in had been consumed by the jungle. Looking through the window, the general could see Catachan, fat with the corpses of his soldiers, laughing and daring him to send it another meal. The heretical fleets were beaten back, but they would return. The troop ships were standing by.

"We know now what to expect, sir," added the commissar lord.

"Indeed we do. Send in more troops," replied the general emotionlessly, his eyes falling to the huge fleet of transports that had yet to deploy their guard. "We've got millions of men. Send them all in. We'll break this jungle."

…

The void lit up with the light of the warp. For a moment, time and space fell apart within a single tiny well, releasing the warp and that which was contained within: a fleet of Imperial Navy transports, bloated with guardsmen and supplies. These war-weary veterans were just arriving from their previous warzone, leaving a war that had abruptly ended with the extinction of the orks. There could not have been fewer than ten million men in the vast shoal of Imperial ships. At their head was a mighty command ship: a floating citadel of cannon and command posts to which every man in the other craft answered to. Usoran could not easily count the ships he saw from the window of his battle barge.

"So tell me what he looks like," Odeen asked from the center of the medicare bay, sitting upon a table and idly pawing at the back of a servitor's head. He thanked a surf as the robed man handed him a wooden plate covered in raw meat. Odeen wolfed down the food with starved ferocity. Usoran could not imagine this man could be an Astartes like him. He was so uncouth and lacked the intelligent regimentation of his company. His comrade too, lying there on the table, was as unwashed as a tavern floor and built like the drunkard who lay upon it. Underneath his wounds and wrapped bandages, Usoran could see the man eyeing him sharply.

'He is as volatile as a drunkard too,' Usoran thought, 'little wonder we have such contempt for these bezerkers.'

"Usoran?"

"Like an old man or any priest true to the Emperor, wrapped in His grace. He has a certain fatherly quality to him. He speaks like a teacher and stands always before me when he appears to me," Usoran explained. He chose not to explain that his dreams featuring the man whom he so firmly believed to be his primarch also involved him turning back into a child. He decided mentioning this would bring on an unending stream of jeers from the ill disciplined Space Wolves. "But do not concern yourself with my dreams. Your fleet will be here soon to extract you."

"I am interested, Usoran," replied Odeen. "The prophecy of Russ tells that he will return at the end…" his voice trailed wearily off. "I wonder, if your primarch has come to you, will ours come too?" Odeen did not return the empty plate to the surf when he offered to take it. "When will the last battle come?"

"Ah! If Lion El'Jonson is truly back, he is as cowardly as a PDF gunbaby. Where is he? Where was he when the warp devoured our position? Where was your beautiful primarch when chaos tore across all this way? He is a coward! Not like Russ, Russ would have Abaddon's head in a moment!" barked the other Space Wolf from his spot.

"Odeen, can you calm your comrade?" asked Usoran, his logic warning him against an outburst in his primarch's defense.

"He is right, Dark Angel. If that really is your gene father, then where is he? Why is he hiding?" Odeen laughed, "Russ would not hide in anyone's dreams." Usoran grumbled and turned back to the outside. Idiots, they were truly the dogs of the Astartes by name and by nature. He did not notice the serf flee the room.

"Lion El'Jonson may act as he wishes, but I know, I know it is him," Usoran tried to be as calm as he could. Odeen spoke no more, either because he had nothing to say or to avoid outraging Usoran with more remarks about the Dark Angels. The other Space Wolf, Frekka as Usoran would later learn the man's name to be, spoke up.

"Dark Angel, if you truly think that a long sword that you lifted off the body of a heretic is the sword of your willy primarch, then you are allowing yourself too much credit. It is more likely that chaos itself whispers to you. I know you lions are thick, but even you can see the danger in carrying that." The Space Wolf paused, "or was your primarch so negligent that he let his trusted sword fall into heretical hands?" Usoran gave him a dirty look.

"I rescued you, son of Russ. I request you to show me…"

"You didn't rescue me. By your own admission, you were led to us by an illusion of chaos."

"There is no proof of that…"

"You follow visions faster than for your own good." The conversation ended when the door at the end of the medicare bay flew open, thrown apart by the powerful armored hands of a senior Dark Angels sergeant and six men from three squads. All were dressed for battle. They marched coldly in behind the serf, who pointed to Frekka.

"Ah, the rest of the pride," leered Frekka.

"You dishonoured our primarch?" asked the sergeant sharply, approaching the two Space Wolves with balled fists. The others behind him all whispered among themselves. They were more like a pack of bullies than space marines. Almost like the Space Wolves.

"Enough…" Usoran began. Frekka leapt to his feet despite his wounds and beat his barrel chest.

"Yes I did! Because Usoran thinks he can channel visions of him. Because he hides when Russ promised he'd return. Because you're hiding here while the real men of the Imperium go to war against the Despoiler!" He spread his hands apart, so to fend off multiple attackers and licked his bruised lips. One of the Dark Angels, Brother Scouan, drew an ornate combat knife.

"Enough!" Usoran yelled, stepping between the two sides. It wasn't just the Space Wolves: even the Dark Angels could act like animals sometimes. He glared at his brother marines, who shrunk back a few paces. "We are the Emperor's best, we do not quarrel amongst ourselves." He turned his head to Frekka. "Space Wolf, all the space marine chapters here are moving in as support elements to the various invasion fleets. Our brother chapters hunt the worlds for Abaddon nd his traitor legions. We must stop them before they depart for Terra."

"For Camlan," Odeen stated. All eyes turned to him. "Abadon is headed for Terra. Afennor, the scout I was with, spied on the Alpha Legion during our ordeal aboard their ship. Abadon is going to a place he called Camlan. Afennor learned that from a loose-lipped heretic." The Dark Angels looked at one another.

"Why, space dog, did you not tell us earlier?" one of them blared. Odeen's face grew hot but his temper remained cool. He did not answer. Usoran knew the reason at once: he was keeping it a secret from them so he could tell his own chapter when they collected him. Truly, the rivalry between their chapters was great.

"What happened to the scout you were with?" asked another marine, his voice echoing out solidly from behind his skull-like helmet. Odeen shrugged.

"We crashed and I never saw him again," he replied. "A shame. He was such a fine warrior."

…

"…And all forces are accounted for. As with the other planets, a small number of our legion remains behind, in our case, two ninths of the sum of our forces. The Imperials won't even know we're gone until it's too late," finished Paskatera as he ducked his head before the giant before him: Abaddon himself. He raised his bowed head to look into the Despoiler's eyes. "Brother in chaos, I await your will." Abaddon's thin lips smiled as he appraised the Alpha Legion lord in front of him, his piercing eyes carrying all the authority of the Eye of Terror.

"I can feel the warp, it finds a strong anchor in you. When the Immaterium consumes all, you will make a fearsome daemon." Paskatera snarled and cackled. "Only if you do no fail me between now and the last hour of our victory. Understand?" Paskatera was taken aback by the words, not thinking Abaddon would even believe he or the Alpha Legion would fail. It was mildly insulting.

"I do," Paskatera said sharply.

"Understand?" Abaddon demanded, louder, and in a sharper voice that shook the small iron chamber of the _Planet Killer: _Abaddon's flagship_. _

"I do," replied Paskatera to the lonely chamber. He bowed his head, looking down upon a deck that was furnished with the ossified bones of Imperial soldiers. The eight-pointed star hung on the wall behind him, glaring at Paskatera with all the eyes of the chaos gods, putting their faith in him. "The Alpha Legion will not fail you." Abaddon nodded, though his lack of confidence was apparent by how still his face was.

"The powers of the warp rely upon you, do not fail them," Abaddon replied.

"Khorne will drink deeply." Mentioning the Blood God's name made Paskatera's axe shake.

"Then return to your ship and make your warriors ready." The darkness of the chamber closed in around Paskatera, encasing him in an opaque cocoon. It was gone in a moment, and his surroundings had changed. Once more, Paskatera stood on the bridge of the single Alpha Legion ship in the fleet: a mundane pirate ship. The loss of the first ship had been a humiliating setback. Paskatera did not think of this as he strode through the hallways of their little ship, past rooms where Alpha Legion warriors basked in their excitement of the upcoming slaughter. Paskatera could almost hear Khorne's laughter when a room of Alpha Legion warriors cackled over a joke.

The grubby, dimly lit hallway that Paskatera soon found himself inside was where he wanted to be. Pushing through clouds of floating dust beneath dull orange lights, Paskatera found the iron door to Vashuss' chamber. He pushed the door open, eager to report on Abaddon.

Vashuss' chamber was devoid of everything, even lacking a single chair, more a cavern than the quarters for a lord of chaos. In the edge of the barren chamber, Vashuss stood, gazing out at the warp's depths just beyond the glass of the grubby window. In one hand was his gladius. In the reflection upon the glass, Paskatera could see a blank, silent look upon his neutral face. Vashuss was gazing off into eternity, perhaps planning his next strike, perhaps in communication with daemons, or perhaps remembering. Vashuss must have seen him, but said nothing if he had.

"My lord?" asked Paskatera, "I saw Abaddon. I make my report."

"Do not," Vashuss replied, "not yet." He turned to Paskatera solemnly. "You have done well, very well." Vashuss walked past him without a second look. Paskatera hastily followed his lord. "I go to interrogate the assassin who tried to kill me," Vashuss explained. "I do not wish your company. This must be done alone." He raised his hand, clicking the jaws of the cybernetic sepents around his wrist. Regardless, Paskatera still followed him up to the bowels of the ship, where the assassin hung.

Compared to other parts of the ship, this wing was the darkest and most dirtied part of the whole craft. There were lights, but they did not work. Paskatera inhaled lungfuls of choking dust with every breath. Their lonely footsteps were the only sounds to be heard in this, the deepest shadow in the whole of the ship's filthy gloom. Inside a tight storage closet, from a wooden ceiling he hung, held in the choking grasp of a coil of mechanical serpents that hung from the ceiling. They were wrapped around his ankles but worked their way around his torso, tying his arms to his sides, and finishing around his shoulders. The pathetic boy, Paskatera would use no other word, looked asleep with his eyes closed. His face was pointed to the ground and squinting through the cracks across the coils of the machine-snakes that held the boy aloft, Paskatera could see the scars from a scourge.

"Will you slit his throat, my lord? May I do it? At least a single small token to Khorne," begged Paskatera. Vashuss ignored him and strode over to the prisoner. A swat to the side of the head caught his attention. The whites of the young assassin's eyes appeared.

"I am Vashuss," the lord began. "You will tell me your name."

" 'fennor…" the assassin mumbled. Paskatera grinned and thought of all the devlilish ways he could exsanguinate the boy.

"Were you alone?" Vashuss demanded. The boy, Fennor, or whatever he said, answered by spraying a mouthful of spit into Vashuss' face. However, the chaos lord was quicker, raising his hand to shield his eyes in a move fast enough to pluck a bird from the air. Vashuss took the boy's hair in a fist to hold his head straight to look into his eyes. "You pathetic little worm," Vashuss sneered softly, "do you think you will deny me anything with your silence? Am I not the lord of the whole Alpha Legion? Do you not think that I have arcane devices and callous psykers at my beck and call? I can take any information from you that I choose. The only question is: how painful for you will it be? Do you wish to tell me, or shall I use technology to tear the secret from your soft…little…brain?" Vashuss ran a finger along the diameter of the prisoner's forhead to silumate him slicing his head open.

"I'll kill…you," replied the pathetic Imperial, softly, but fiercely. Paskatera could feel the boy's feeble hatred even at this distance. His eyes were as hard as Astartes eyes. "Chaos…scum…you killed the Black Tomb. You killed all my…my squad, my friends. "

"Yes," Vashuss muttered casually, "yes, I probably did."

"I swear Vashuss, I'll kill you. Not today, not tomorrow, but one day, you will die and I will be there to make it happen…"

"Put a stop to your idiocy, fool." Vashuss looked at Paskatera and took a few steps towards him.

"You vile warp-spawn," the boy suddenly shouted to the back of Vashuss' head, "I will live to see you die!"

"Give your report to Slaesh while I…deal with this one," Vashuss muttered as he raised a cybernetic serpent up to shoulder height. The counterfeit serpent snapped its jaws menacingly, lusting for blood. Paskatera nodded and closed the door as Vashuss turned back to the prisoner, the raised serpent still clicking its jaws hungrily. Paskatera bore the torment of not getting to watch, but sedated his bloodlust with promises of more victims to come as he slunk through the hallway.


	31. Lion's Warning

Usoran lifted himself onto the chair, his little hands clasping the arms for support to his thin limbs. He turned around and leaned across the table to look into the face of the man seated there, ancient and somehow ethereal. The light of the homely fireplace cast dancing shadows across his thin face. The wooden walls shone to a soft amber shade beneath the fire's light. From a corner of the cabin, a carved wooden totem of a warrior wielding a hammer glared fiercely at nothing. The air smelt of woodsmoke. From the walls hung the feathers of all the birds the hunter who lived in the cabin had shot during his hard-bitten and demanding life.

"[i]Are you hungry, young Tabbercs?[/i]" asked the ancient man, or as Usoran thought of him, an angel. Usoran shrugged his unarmored shoulders and picked idly at his peasant's vest.

"I have done as you asked, my lord. I brought my warriors to Krieg and discovered, with the help of another, a Space Wolf who knew important information about Abaddon. I am grateful for your aid," Usoran bowed his head, his floppy hair hanging down. He raised his head to see the angel smiling.

"[i]No need to bow,[/i]" the old man assured him.

"It is all the respect that I would show to my primarch," Usoran felt foolish, sitting in a chair that was too big for him, his sandaled feet not even touching the floor. "Your greatness, you have guided me well, but there are things I must know. Who are you?" Usoran was little surprised when the angel laughed.

"[i]I think you already know who I am, in your heart,[/i]" the old man replied warmly.

"So it is you then, Lion El'Jonson?" Usoran's voice was boyishly cheerful.

"[i]It is what you want. And thus to you, I am[/i]" replied the angel. "[i] And what is the other question?[/i]" Usoran hadn't told him there would be another question.

"The man I saw on Krieg, the man in a cloak with a mask of black and eyes of shadow…who…what was he?" Lion's face deepened, his eyes grew distant as he reached deep into his infinite wisdom to recall the answer.

"[i]He is an ancient being of psychic energy, not quite a daemon, but none too distant from one either. His war is a lonely one.[i]" Lion smiled softly at him. "[i]Do not expect to meet him ever again. Trouble yourself no further with the struggles of others and turn instead inward.[i]" Lion seemed to know more, but Usoran knew better than to grill him for answers. He left it at that and continued with his questions.

"I am with my chapter. What do we do now?"

"[i]You are at the daemon worlds. I do not know where the Despoiler is, but you know where he will soon be. I can help you no more here. I can see only that Abaddon is not upon Krieg. You must find him yourself…[i]"

Those words rang in his ears as he awoke.

Usoran opened his eyes. He was back in the chapel aboard his ship. Would his brothers believe the words of Lion? Would they willingly leave Krieg for another destination?


	32. Siege of Iron

Necromunda.

Once a world that teamed with gang violence. Now it was an image of the adamant strength of the powers of chaos undivided. Concrete replaced soil. Iron palaces replaced hills. Daemonic cities of solid steel replaced hives. Sprawling trenches and mile-high walls replaced deserts. A billions-strong garrison of traitors, mutants, and heretics from all over the galaxy had replaced its native population. It was a general's paradise. And the job of taking it fell to the Fifth Army Group: one of the larger invasion fleets assembled to attack these daemon worlds. Veterans of hive invasions and orkish attritions were gathered by the hundred million to invade, with reinforcements on their way from light-years away. They could subjugate a whole sector with the troops they wielded.

As the Imperial Navy covered their attack, the troop ships fell onto Necromunda like rain. Some were hit by the defensive batteries, and hundreds of lives were wasted in novas of flaming death. But there were countless thousands of ships raining down and the furious return of navy fire reduced some of these batteries to slag, easing the drop. Regardless, tens of thousands of men had lost their lives before the first Imperial foot stepped onto the Iron Warrior's daemon world.

…

Fire and invaders rained onto Necromunda. A single tower rose from the concrete steppe, high above the trenches. A wall, as big as a distant mountain range filled the western horizon. This fat tower carried a vile shrine to the chaos pantheon atop its flat summit: an eight-pointed star with a human eyeball lying in the center. Around it was a coven of cultists, channeling the power of chaos to battle with the invaders.

All atop the tower suddenly disappeared into a nova, delivered onto them by a flashing dark shape that soared overhead in the daemon sky. It swept off into the horizon, though from behind it came a scattered handful of more dark shapes that dropped with the speed of rain. These shapes, twelve in number, shaped themselves into stormtroopers as they dropped close enough to the wrecked top-half of the tower. The hiss of their grav-chutes died away as each man touched down upon the tower with rehearsed precision. They worked as if under a single mind, sweeping the top for survivors, weapons, and points of interest, all with the silence of a puff of smoke.

Karsenner gestured to red group and pointed to the stairs. He signaled to the other three groups, his rapid hand movements indicating their plan. Quickly, they moved into action, the stormtroopers moving into the tower while one group covered their rear. Down into the concrete bowels of the tower they went, their mission objective still ringing in their heads.

"Destroy the communications room."

Moving down the spiral staircase, Karsenner heard someone shooting, then a man screech.

"Enemy down."

"Move," whispered Karsenner, urging his men forward.

They passed further down into the tower, stepping over the body of a metal-skinned mutant before bursting through a doorway at the bottom of the stairs.

The room beyond was their objective: a humble chamber of stone housing a vox-caster set. Crouched about it were a half dozen heretics in matching metal uniforms, looking at a dataslate that carried their latest command:

-... . .-- .- .-. . .-.-.- / ... --- -- . / .. .-. --- -. / .-- .- .-. .-. .. --- .-. ... / .-. . -- .- .. -. / --- -. / - .... . / .--. .-.. .- -. . - .-.-.- / -... . / -.-. .- .-. . ..-. ..- .-.. / .-- .... . -. / -.-- --- ..- / .--. .-.. .- -. - / - .... . / -.-. .... .- .-. --. . ... .-.-.-

The stormtroopers opened up upon the group, lasfire punching men off their feet and leaving steaming holes in their armored suits. Not a single one of them could shoot back before the elite of the guard could slay them all. Only when the last man had fallen did the daemons of the world claim the tower. Even as Karsenner watched, the vox-caster set and all the controls in the room dissolved to grey powder.

"You feel that?" one of the members of blue group asked. Karsenner indeed could. It felt like the tower was collapsing slowly, being drawn into the ground by quicksand.

"Back to the top," Karsenner whispered. The team hastened to the tower's top and burst out just as the tower was absorbed back into the ground of the daemon world. The corrupted Necromunda would not leave any fortifications in the hands of its enemies.

…

The ramp to the ship opened: opening a gateway wide enough to accommodate a baneblade. The darkness, which Lanste had been living in, was filled with the light of Necromunda; grey and bleak, adding to the mood of war. Squeezing his lasgun, Lanste swallowed a mouthful of bile and made ready to rush out.

"The Emperor protects!" howled the regimental commissar's booming voice. "In his name, charge!" Lanste only caught sight of a mountainous wall and rockrete bunkers surrounded by trenches before an autocannon shell hit him in the throat.

"GO GO GO!" commissar Hyralisan shouted as he drew his saber and pointed outside, waving his bolt pistol as the guardsmen flooded down the ramp. Shots exploded into their ranks, sparks flew off the walls, shrapnel whipped through the air. Men were beaten onto their backs in crimson sprays. Bodies fell, guardsmen stumbled, men died. Fighting against the momentum of the oncoming fire, the guardsmen squeezed forward across the smooth stone ground towards the objective: a line of bunkers and trenches a half kilometer away.

"In the Emperor's name, no holding back!" yelled Hyralisan as he gunned down a man who refused to move forward. He looked at the other coward: standing beside him, who refused to move. "Trooper, go or die!" The wash of troops continued flooding outside, leaving the two men alone. A carpet of bodies kept them company.

"They're all dying!" wailed the coward, pointing to the mess of guardsmen, who were dashing towards the bunker. Even as the commissar watched, one in ten were falling down.

"Then you will die…" An ordnance shell fired by heretical artillery sailed into the troop ship to join the commissar and detonated.

…

"Forward!" sergeant Nickols snapped before small arms fire ripped him off his feet. Kye scooped up his fallen chainsword to lead the rest of his squad on.

"First platoo…" Kye began before an autocannon shot hit him. Running from the red ruin of his fallen squad mates, trooper Smethison ducked behind a grey leman russ, which had rolled out as part of the armored group to support their assault. Fifty men were doing the same. Amongst them were Dylanus, Beareno and Methehn. All around, Smethison could see other tanks were rolling forward, bunches of men cowering behind their armored advance, spilling battlecannon and bolter shells into the heretical bunkers. Guardsmen lay dead in a sparse carpet across the ground. The troop ships were gradually coming apart under punishing artillery fire. Every now and then, a dusty explosion leapt up from the ground, throwing debris and bodies high. Luckily, none found any of the tanks. Still, the heretics had wrecked several of the dozens of leman russ tanks, which were presently blackened and ablaze.

"The sergeant is gone," shouted Smethison over the hail of fire. The tank he hid behind fired. An artillery shell landed nearby. A wing of thunderbolts zoomed overhead, all in the same moment. He had to repeat himself.

"Then mob up with another group I say!" shouted Beareno.

"Does it even matter out here who is with who?" The whole group shuddered and ducked their heads as a line of sparks danced across the leman russ as bolterfire raked it.

"We need our officers if we're to take these bunkers!" Beareno barked. Smethison chanced a quick glance out at the bunkers. He could see their gun slits were burning with the muzzle flares of heretical guns. In the trenches around them swarmed the enemy. He pulled his head back.

"I think we can take it without the man breathing down our neck," Smethison insisted. An artillery shot hit the leman russ next to them. It flew apart in a hurricane of fire and twirling metal chunks. The men behind it were knocked to the ground by the force of the blast. From the wreck clambered a burning crewman, waving his arms, before falling limp to the ground as the enemy shot him. Before Smethison could evaluate the full effects of the damage, an artillery shot landed close by, obscuring the leman russ behind a wall of leaping dust. His leman russ fired its main gun.

"We're getting close," Smethison heard someone say. More bolterfire raked the leman russ' top.

"If we get out of this, I promise to pray to the Emperor every night," Smethison promised. Bolterfire raked the leman russ's flank. Smethison dropped to the floor: the top of his head blasted off by bolterfire. Dylanus, Beareno, and Methehn looked at one another and at the men around them. They all shook hands.

"Now! Rush the trenches!" the order came up from many sides. As one, the guardsmen leapt out from behind their tanks and crossed the few meters between them and the edges of the enemy trenches. Those few meters cost them dearly: with enemy guns dropping them in layers. Beareno heard shots whiz around him, slamming into soft flesh, before he jumped down. Supressing fire from the leman russ tanks did the best they could, but those bunkers had a raptor's gaze over the trenches and could still fire murderously when they could. Though many of the enemy now lay in pieces at the bottom on the trenches, more swept in from the supporting trenches to combat the guard. The enemy, clad in gleaming breastplates, trenchcoats and in roughly shaped helmets, stormed the guardsmen.

"Die!" Dylanus fired his lasgun into the face of one of the enemy, punching him to the floor. Another came at him with a rough dagger from the flank, but this one was affixed with a bayonet through the throat. Lasfire flew over his head, dropping a man as he entered the trenches. Dylanus was shoved into the wall as the melee declined into a mad brawl. Lasguns fell and people began beating one another with fists and knives as the press of men grew untolerably thick. Dylanus fired his lasgun into the back of an enemy, then was dazed as a nearby bunker exploded under Imperial fire. He saw a guardsmen get brained by a flying piece of rockrete.

"AHHH!" Dylanus shouted thorough the confusion, leaping into the fray to join Beareno, who was grappling with a heretic. Dylanus bashed the unhelmeted man over the head with the butt of his lasgun, then tried to bring the barrel around to shoot the man. Something ripped the gun right out of his hands. Beareno pulled an autopistol from the ground and shot the enemy soldier through the eye at point blank range as Dylanus felt a lasbolt go through him.

Beareno ducked into the melee, knocking someone over, as he stepped back from Dylanus as he fell. Using his autopistol, Beareno shot the heretic who had murdered Dylanus. He shot three times in the chest. Nearby, something exploded. Beareno's hearing left him for a moment before it began to trickle back to him. Though there was not much to hear, beyond the furious sound of fighting, lasgun shots, and the odd scream. Beareno felt something wet on his hand as he slid it across the wall of the trench. It was warm. He wiped his hand on the wall before going back into the fray.

Abruptly, there was another explosion. This one was accompanied by the sight of flaming debris of a leman russ soaring into the sky some meters away. But still the ferocious guardsmen fought on, slaying the heretics in the brutal melee. As the guardsmen overwhelmed the heretics and pushed into the support trenches, the leman russ column began firing at something else. Beareno did not care what at first and helped his men storm the bunkers, climbing over piles of corpses and ducking down occasionally as bullets raked along the trenches, killing the odd unfortunate who couldn't duck down in time.

"Storm the bunkers! From the rear!" The distant sound of lasfire told him that the bunkers were being emptied. With a group of twenty men behind him, Beareno rushed up to the back of a bunker. One man opened the heavy steel door and tossed a grenade in. The detonation was followed by a cloud of emerging dust. Storming the bunker, Beareno found it to contain three bodies. The men were chained to a pair of tripod-mounted heavy bolters. Spend shell casings covered the floor. Looking closer, Beareno realized the men and their chains, and therefore their weapons, were one. Only when Beareno looked outside the bunker's gun slit, he saw it. Methehn rushed up to join him and froze in horror.

What Beareno saw was a monster, with the lower body in the shape of a crab capped by the body of a devil, forged of grey metal and with a bronze trim. Where a devil's clawed arms would be, it carried a pair of shoulder-mounted cannon. Its huge claws tore into the wreck of a leman russ, shredding aside armor plating like paper. Its cannons were firing steadily into the crowded trench, reaping kills with every fired shot.

Across the trenches in fact, it was pandemonium. Daemon engines had been unleashed from their workshop-lairs, unchained by their keepers, and thrown into battle. The guardsmen's heroic conquest of the bunkers and trenches turned into a massacre. Metal monsters of every frightening description tore up the infantry and their armored support with ruthless ferocity while their guns spat death.

"Back! Back!" Colonel Giesbrecht cried to his throngs, who fled from the engines between him and the troopships. "Damn, they got behind us," he spat as he turned to his comms officer. "Call in support to kill these things," he demanded before retreating deeper into the trench network with his men. He was running towards the distant wall to escape the enemy. In his mind, he found it easy to believe the daemon engines were herding him and his regiment. They had to be destroyed! Abruptly, the men started fleeing, scores pushing past him, many of them not even armed. In hot pursuit, its chainsaw arms mutilating men as it barreled forward like a bull, was what looked like a steel red beetle as big as a tank with a bronze skull. Its arms were covered in glistening gore. And it was coming right for him.

He fled before the behemoth's terrible advance, stomping over the bodies of men who'd fallen. Behind him, the screams of those not fast enough whipped him to run faster. But no matter how fast he ran, he could always hear the rusty whirling of its blades.

"Help!" he could only gurgle in fear as the daemon engine overtook him and added him to its morbid tally in a swing of its hungry blades.

The trenches were flooded with fleeing guardsmen and rampaging daemon engines, who were making sport of their human prey having already wrecked their last tanks. They were giant beasts of metal, feasting with impunity on the doomed troopers. Those not fast enough to escape them were ruthlessly gunned down. Their feet trampled men to broken a pulp, their claws tore them up. Their steel and iron faces could not show pity as their glowing optics surveyed the carnage they unleashed. All the while, heretical artillery shots landed amongst the guard, the most deadly shots claiming dozens as they exploded amidst dense crowds.

But all was not lost. The distant thunder of the Imperial Navy caused the daemon engines to end their slaughter and survey the sky. Each one looked silently on as vast wings of thunderbolts swooped in, flak exploding around them. Burning thunderbolts fell from the sky like meteors, crashing into flaming ruins upon the war-ravaged ground, but they came bravely on. The daemon engines scattered as waves of missiles slashed down at them. The murderous engines scattered as the thunderbolts swept by the trenches. Several of the daemon engines flew apart as missiles found them: thus avenging hundreds of troopers. The engines broke into an open retreat as they fled towards the distant wall. The bruised thunderbolts retreated as more troopships landed. Fresh tanks churned forward along with tens of thousands of fresh troops and artillery to challenge that wall. In a column miles wide, the next wave of guard advanced.

"We're saved," whispered Beareno as he emerged from the bunker to join the reinforcements. The thunder of Imperial artillery had quieted the heretical bombardment. Beareno took one fearful look at the swarms of retreating daemon engines before heading through crimson trenches to join his comrades. But as he walked, he felt himself rise up. The floor of the trench was lifting while the bunkers, ruined and otherwise, were flattening. The land was being reshaped! Beareno could not believe his eyes when he looked around himself moments later to see a field of blood and corpses where the body-laden trenches had laid. Amidst the flatness that had been their battlefield were the only survivors of the battle: all Imperial Guardsmen. They had taken the trenches, so the daemon world took them back.

"Emperor…" whispered Beareno as the daemon engines turned around. Leman russ tanks fired at them, but their shots landed short. The enemy was safely out of range. The mountainous wall was far off, but even at this distance Beareno could see many hidden gates opening. Each of the gate's sizes was such that a being that stood one hundred meters tall, at the very least, could walk through them comfortably. As the advancing reinforcements met up with him, Beareno could hear them praying, cursing, or both. Beareno's blood froze as he heard an officer yell something.

"TITANS!"

The cry ended as the air seemed to ignite. Tanks melted and entire regiments of guardsmen turned to dust as the column in all its glory, vanished in a horizontal bonfire.

…

[i]Casualties severe [/i] was what Armstrong kept hearing. All the dozens of landing zones across Necromunda were chewing up regiments at an alarming rate. Reinforcements were pouring in from across the whole sector, but Armstrong had a grim feeling that they would not be enough, especially if the other worlds were this deadly. Even if they had a virus bomb or the means to carry out an exterminatus, even if all the exterminatus-capable weapons hadn't been used up years ago and they had one here, Armstrong mused that it wouldn't be enough.

"I pray the Imperial Fists and the Iron Hands will be enough," he muttered to himself as he watched the Astartes drop pods rain down.

…

The citadel was ringed by circles and circles of walls and trenches, guard towers and gun batteries more numerous than the bullets carried by a single trooper. Half of it presently lay in blood-spattered ruin. Towers lay dead amongst heaps of their own refuse and walls had holes blasted in them. Statues of Petrurabo lay in oblivion. The air above the miles-wide complex was filled with the explosions of rockets and anti-aircraft fire. Zooming amidst this hail of death were wings of chaos and Imperial fighters, grinding the other to death in a lethal swirl of unending dogfights. Wrecked craft fell from the sky to bless the ground below them with tones of falling metal. Around the citadel was a solid ring of Imperial tanks and men, pushing relentlessly at the daemonic stronghold. Through the trenches, on the ramparts, and across the courtyards of this sprawling fort, tens of thousands of men fought and died. Imperial and chaos bodies lay in heaps, choking trenches, clogging ramparts, and forming mounds for the living to hide behind. The dead piled higher by the passing moment. Only the citadel itself was contested by Imperial hands. From its gun-covered summit, heretics rained artillery shells down onto the attackers without fear of their overwhelming numbers. Directing the flow of battle was a single Iron Warriors lord, ringed by eight other traitor marines.

"What?" he gnashed into his earpiece as he gazed out across the battlefield.

"My lord, the titans are deployed," replied the throaty reply from his earpiece.

"Good. By chaos, you will hold them back from the tower," the lord snarled with his mouth, filed with metal teeth. He thought of the tower near the eye of the planet, build of the ruins of Necromunda's hives. All the forts the Imperials were dying for were worthless, save that one. His thoughts were interrupted as the sound of thunder filled the air. He looked up just in time to see a hail of drop pods slam down onto the tower's top. Four were yellow, two were grey.

One of the grey ones opened…

"For the Emperor!" cried Nachins, his built-in siren wailing his inhuman warcry as he raised his cybernetic limb, in its grasp was a whining chainsword. He looked upon the center of the tower, at the eight Iron Warriors and their helmetless champion, a man who carried a huge black hammer and who smiled with steel fangs. As his Iron Warriors formed a fortress around him, Nachins barreled forward, sprawing fire from his plasma pistol at the men around him. The corrupt space marines could not shoot at him, because at that moment, the occupants of the other drop pods emerged. A mix of Imperial Fists and Iron Hands appeared. The top of the tower spun into a frenzy of killing. Bolterfire drowned out all sound.

Nachins saw an Iron Warrior fall beneath his plasma pistol fire. An orange-rimmed hole was driven into his chest and smoke billowed from his eyeholes. Nachins bolted over this man and swung his blade down at the Iron Warriors lord, who parried the swing with enough force to beat Nachins' bionic arm back.

"Your Mechanicus toys canot stand the might of true iron!" laughed the lord in a voice that sounded like human thunder before bolting forward with incredible and sudden speed. Nachins was sent sprawling to the floor and would probably have been killed if the lord had not taken the time the crush the skull of an Iron Hand who stood in his way. Leaping with almost superhuman agility over the falling battle brother, the chaos lord bellowed like a foghorn. Nachins raised his pistol. His targeting matrix, built into the left side of his skull, targeted the lord's eyes. In two quick squeezes, he sent plasma shots into each of those eyes. Blue fire, which slowly consumed his head, erupted from each of them as the plasma shots hit. He rolled aside and the chaos lord hit the tower like a meteor.

"Iron within and iron without?" asked Nachins to the smouldering heap, "you are weak, rusty, and too faithful in your flesh." Nachins looked about for more enemies to kill, but saw his battle brothers had cleared the tower's summit. The massacred Iron Warriors decorated the floor, alongside ten Imperial Fists. They had exclusively attacked members of that chapter: their mortal enemies. Only two brothers of the fists remained, compared to eight Iron Hands. Both were prostrated in prayer over their dead brothers.

"We have taken the summit. No sign of the Despoiler, but there were men of the Iron Warriors here. The legion must still be on Necromunda," Nachins said into his earpiece, or rather, his ear. His bionic eye looked over his damaged chainsword as the reply came.

"Brother Nachins, abandon your mission upon the tower and focus on remaining alive. A whole legion of chaos titans comes towards you. They've already destroyed an entire landing zone," spoke the words of Nachin's chapter master. In a moment, the coordinates to the titan's inbound location were broadcast into his brain. Nachins looked westward, towards a distant wall of mountainous size. It would be invisible to a normal human eye, even an astartes one. Only with his bionic eye could Nachins see the distant black line on the horizon, through the smoke of the battle below.

"Down," commanded Nachins to his warriors, "down, we must drive into the citadel. Silence their guns, their communications, and seek out clues to the whereabouts of Abaddon." His order was obeyed in silence as, with mechanical precision, the Iron Hands pried open the trap door below them and systematically swept the lower floors for the enemy. Nachins lead them, peering into empty chambers and hallways. Here, the thunder of the outside battle was distant, muffled by the walls. Nachins did not wish to be here, searching in silence, while men of the Imperium battled so valiantly against chaos just beyond these walls.

"The Iron Warriors do not show themselves," remarked one of the Imperial Fists as they found yet another chamber to be empty. Nachins entered an empty stone corridore of the seemingly abandoned keep and strode to a short staircase of stone that led to a lower level. He scowled at the chaos star hanging above it. A man of flesh might have wasted fuel to shoot the icon with his plasma pistol. Nachins did not.

And it was fortunate for the Imperium that he didn't.

"Iron within and iron without! Make the masters proud!" bellowed a burly mutant through a wide throat as he stormed up the stairs, his three fat limbs each brandishing a chainsword while a metal visor covered his single eye. He led a charge of mutants, naked but for a few sheets of steel that were chained over their malformed bodies. In their hands was a riot of melee weaponry as misshapen as they. Their soft red glow warned Nachins not to underestimate this mismatched assortment of axes and shanks.

Bolterfire met the charge with ferocity, sending dozens of mutants to the floor in a red spray. The leader lost an arm to a bolt round. Nachins could see glistening bone sticking out from the resulting stump. His flesh heaved as more shots exploded into it. The leader did not even falter in his mad charge and his followers seemed undiminished despite dozens of casualties. Nachins was the first forward to meet them, placing a plasma shot through the leader's visor. Only then did the beast fall.

Chainsword whirling, Nachins clove down the first mutant to challenge him, sending the wretch to the floor in a spray of sparks that jumped up as his sword broke through his armor. He whipped his blade around and took another man's head off in a spray of red. His plasma pistol wheeled around and sent a slug of blazing hot energy into the eyeball of a third mutant that was coming upon him.

Behind him, the space marines were making equally short work of their foes. With the efficiency of a machine, they fell into a square and allowed their enemies to break upon them like water. Bolterfire sliced down scores of the enemy while a combat knife finished any that got too close: a slit throat here or a stabbed heart there. One mutant, wielding a short sword, had his attack parried by a combat knife. The blade whipped around and severed his jugular, dropping him to the floor. Nachins watched the fine blade shrivel to rust as the energy from the sword ate it away. The disgruntled marine drew his empty fist back and planted a sledgehammer strike into the nose bridge of the mutant. The heretic's skull buckled backwards at an odd angle and the creature fell to the floor, never to rise.

'Defeat,' was the instant thought Nachins thought. Every mutant in the mob of hundreds that now assailed them with the ferocity of a medusa hound was not worth the steel and work that had gone into the forging of that warrior's knife. As Nachins took the head off another gibbering mutant, though not reducing their number by doing so, he could predict they would be overrun.

"Back!" Nachins' augmented voice bellowed, its mechanical attributes apparent in the inhumanity of his speech. And back they went, not in a frantic scramble for sanctuary but sure-footed withdrawl that had been shaped and perfected by training just as a workshop forges and perfects the machinery it constructs. Not a single faithful man died as they reached the stairs and formed an unbreakable phalanx against which no mutant, however muscled or lucky, could find fault in. Swiftly the throng died down until the few wretched survivors that fled were all that remained. Nachins made his way gingerly across the carpet of death, cybernetic eye open for life signs…

"YAH!"

Their flawless victory was flawed. A single survivor, hiding amongst the dead, had leapt to his feet and driven his daemonically blessed shank into the neck of an Iron Hand. The man's head came from his proud shoulders as the daemonic metal cut through his armor with ease. Bolters fired and the mutant died twice before hitting the ground, but the damage was inflicted. Nachins searched his mind for how he could have let such imperfection occur. He would take responsibility for this weakness. Iron Warriors meant something and men of the Astartes could be martyred to bring them down. The dregs of chaos, on the other hand, could be brought down with no such sacrifices.

With a point, Nachins lead the remainder of his unit along. They would not stop searching, even if they had to kill every man in this whole complex to find Abaddon! The titans outside be damned, he had a mission! They would kill every chaos dreg down here! But as they reached the bottom of the staircase, Nachins realized they might not need to. He found the lower chamber to be a cavernous hallway awash with mutants. The high ceiling reached to the top of the tower and every wall was covered in firing positions, which were watched by mounted artillery pieces and machine guns. Ammunition lay in crates in heaps everywhere. But the space marines needed do nothing.

Lithe alien warriors in bright coloured armor battled the mutants with admirable ferocity. Some were dressed in white with green helmets and some in black with white faceplates. Like a mix of dancer and fighter, they maneuvered through the maze of heaped ammunition, their white alien weapons seeding the room with swift death. Some wore headdresses crowned by flowing hair, while their hands brandished long blades that brought elegent pain to the enemy. Nachins was spellbound as he witnessed the eldar warriors massacre the chaos troops without much difficulty or loss of life.

'Treacherous fiends,' Nachins thought of the eldar as the two-score aliens turned to him and remained still. His mind steeled itself to the lies they would speak. One, a helmetless warrior whose hands carried a bloody blade and a short alien pistol, nodded.

"We have searched this place, space marine, but you will find not the one you seek," she replied in her musical eldar accent. "But this place is not where you wish to be. The tower, the tower build of this planet's old spires, it is she that keeps this world bound to the universe. All the worlds that Abaddon has sent have such towers. She and all her evil sisters are heavily guarded by daemonic wards and will endure even if bombarded. Only from within can they fall."

"Kill them!" Nachins barked. In a hail of bolterfire, the space marines sewed death amongst the eldar. Slender alien bodies were blasted to ruin under their bolterfire and much ancient blood was spilt wastefully upon the floor. A few eldar managed to return fire upon their attackers. By damnable chance, two of the space marines fell to their alien weaponry. But what was the loss of two space marines when aliens as rare as these were what they died to kill? The last alien died, her beautiful armor shredded to ugly ruin and her sleek form was broken: never to leap and dodge again. The room went silent.

"They would have betrayed us. Remember, no half measures and no mercy," Nachins quoted an ancient saying. "The rewards of tolerance are treachery and betrayal." They moved on.

…

Half devil, half god machine. The warlord titan's eyes glowed red beneath sweeping horns and above curving tusks. Its cannon were draped in chains, from which hung the defiled bodies of ten thousand sacrifices. Evil chaos runes were carved into the machine's skin. A beastly tail hung from behind it. Its dark grey hide looked black under this sky. Its shoulders burned in a constant inferno, raising a pyre of praise to chaos undivided. To look upon it was to know the insane power that the Imperium faced here.

The besieging force could not afford a fight with one of these, much less fifteen of them. It was by the Emperor's mercy alone that the titans spread out. Guardsmen simply abandoned their positions as the sight of these things and sprinted off in terror. Tanks drove away, guns fell quiet, and even high ranking officers betrayed their oaths and made for safety. Not even the commissar's pistol could hold back the tidal wave of terror that swept the Imperial Guard from the advancing titans, who had yet to take a single life with their guns.

"By the Emperor!" yelled commissar Gebet as he shot a fleeing man, "no surrender…" he was lost from existence as one of the titans fired. A whole block of the attacking Imperials: decimated. Tanks were hurled through the air by the shockwave alone. The day turned as hot and bright as the heart of a bonfire. This heat alone was enough to burn men alive. Woe indeed to these men, who could not die as quickly as the ones caught in the titan's solid ray of superheated energy that left a scar across even the daemon world.

The survivors, who ran still, did not expect to live. But they did, they survived long enough to wonder why they had been spared. Turning, they beheld a miracle. The mile-long column of titans, all fifteen of them, were under attack from behind by yet another formation of titans. But where the warlords were bulky colossi of feral power, these were slender and darting figures with long legs, thin arms, and incredible speed. Twenty in all, the black and white figures, whose designers had surely not been human, much less Imperial, fired hot bars of white light into the shields and skins of these invincible servants of chaos. One of the chaos titans took a beam of alien energy to the knee, which gave way like deathly cold ice would to a star. The Imperials cheered as the immortal titan died: dropping foolishly to the ground. The sky above was illuminated by an artificial meteor shower as swarms of alien landing craft swarmed the planet: each ship visible as a warm blue light. It was beautiful.

The eldar had come, and in numbers unheard of in thousands of years.

Still, even if the Imperials slew all these titans and took the fortress they had fought so hard to take, there still remained that wall in the distance. And the wall beyond it. And the billion defenders that watched them both. And the miles and miles of defenses yet to be seen. And of the tremendous sacrifice in lives that would have to be made. But it was for the best that the guardsmen did not know about this.

It was good for morale.


	33. Burning Sand

Dis.

This world had been a poorly visited world near the Eye of Terror. Shrines to Holy Terra had been erected in defiance of its monstrous neighbour, but like a strong-smelling piece of bait without a trap, it only attracted the attention of the predator. When the Word Bearers came, they found the trap sprung upon them by the defenders to be as easy to survive as a box propped upon a stick. They took the world's cities and turned its proud population to the service of chaos. Billions of cultists from across the galaxy flocked here to worship chaos undivided and the daemons that broke into being upon the reddish sands. Cities of black cathedrals replaced glistening cities. Camel caravans that crossed the hot sands were replaced by processions of depraved men chanting praises to chaos from hoarse throats to grinning daemons. Palm forests burned under immortal bonfires. The clouds turned to smoke and the desert wind to brimstone. The continents formed a single landmass now, shaped by the four gods into the star of chaos undivided.

It was into this hellscape that the Imperials landed. Guardsmen fought alongside the Sisters of Battle and inquisitorial armies against the ravening hoards of chaos worshippers. Across dunes of red sand, Imperial armored regiments clashed with daemon engines, greater daemons, and fleets of traitors in their own tanks, the ghosts of Imperial markings still visible under defaced hulls. In the streets of the cathedral-cities across Dis, millions of men fought fiercely against an unending tide of chaos. Blood flowed through the streets like a river around islands of bodies where the blood was darkest. It was whispered that deep within these cities lay portals to other unholy places, which could bleed out tens of thousands of willing chaos martyrs every day. Though this rumor was unconfirmed, one thing was certain: the deserts of Dis would be coated by the bones of fallen soldiers in little time.

…

"For the Emperor! For the Lion!" Usoran met the heretic's burning eyes as he stabbed him in the gut, feeling his sword break through the man's organs with almost no effort. In an unstoppable swing, Usoran shook the cult lord from his sword and send him across the marble floor of his prayer chamber, leaving a red wake stained upon the floor. All around him, members of his squad were dispatching the last of the red-robed cultists. In the front of the chamber, three Sisters of Battle were burning the statue of a looming daemon with their meltaguns while a priest chanted in High Golthic. In a swing of his sword, Usoran split the skull of the last cultist. His men relaxed, taking care to clean the blood of heretics completely off their precious gear lest its taint foul them as water is fouled by sewage.

"It is not here," Usoran told his battle brothers as they all turned to the statue, which was not collapsing. Logically, it should, but the daemon world's warping of law did not allow the deed to be completed. This was not strange to Usoran. Since coming to this world a month ago, he had learned that everything worked against them. The heat made only guardsmen sweat, dehydrate, and die. Here, fire burned only those faithful to the Emperor. And daemons could appear anywhere…

"Daemon!"

Usoran turned in time to see a beastal figure appear in the center of the room from a cloud of crackling fire that disappeared as the daemon appeared. Its height was three times that of a space marine. Its body: like a man with bright red skin. Its head: a lion's. Its tail was a living snake that sprouted spines. And its back, most disturbing of all: was lined with twisting spidery arms that ended in hooks and blades. To approach it was death. Usoran readied himself as the monster barreled down on one of the younger members of his squad. The battle brother could not stop the monster from tearing him to bloody ribbons. Not even his armor, which had endured bomb blasts, could halt this monster's black claws and taloned back.

"Back to the warp!" barked the priest, pointing his staff at the fiend while the other marines fled to the doorway, not in cowardice, but in self-defense. Usoran had the monster between himself and the door, so could do nothing but prepare himself.

"You dare wear a lion's head?" Usoran asked the daemon, "you are not worthy of a rat's head, warpspawn!" his sword raised above his head and prepared to kill the thing.

"[b] You think to challenge me? Your corpse god cannot save you. Come into my embrace and scream forever in the heat of my realm![/b]" laughed the daemon as it made forward.

"So be it. Lion El'Jonson's judgement is upon you!" bellowed Usoran as he dove forward, alone. Meltagun shots disappeared against the daemon's hide as the two dove together to clash. Rival tidal waves. Only one force would endure this collison. All the daemon's unnatural ligaments descended upon Usoran while the Dark Angel swung his blade just as Lion El'Jonson must surely have. The daemon's red eyes showed surprise as the holy blade severed its blades from its limbs. The tip continued on and cut into its throat as it ducked down to bite. The skilled Dark Angel was behind the daemon before it could react, cutting a line across the monster's flank. With a cry, Usoran weaved the sword into the air, point to the sky, then brought it plunging into the daemon's back, stabbing all the way through. He cut up to the daemon's belly and leapt back.

Fire belched out of his cuts in absence of blood. The howling daemon was consumed by the flames as it was sent straight back to its hell. Usoran only relaxed when the last wisp of smoke was gone. With a huff, Usoran sheathed his sword and hurried to the remains of his comrade.

"How can someone stand before a daemon, unafraid?" whispered one of the Sisters to the other in as soft a voice as she could manage. Usoran could hear her none-the-less.

"It is by the power of the Emperor and my primarch," replied Usoran. "This is the Lion Sword. It sings in battle once again, breaking daemons as it once did."

…

They stood, a triple rank of sapphire blue, fifty bodies long, their cloud coloured shuriken catipults pointed skyward, their raven coloured crests arching above their heads like the sails of a ship. To contradict their blackened crests, their helmets were the same pale as their weapons. Not one dire avenger even flinched from his or her post as they watched the human shells abate. Now, between the arching giants of the twin cathedrals, an ash fog blanketed the ground, replacing energetic explosions from the human guns. Their warcries, far enough away to sound like a memory, but as violent as humans could get, could be heard through the crisp crackling of falling dust as the air settled. Asurmen was unafraid.

"Raise, as one," Asurmen spoke to his seven score and ten warriors, his ancient blade raised. "And so, as one, we win the day." The dire avengers lowered their guns to train on the cloud, ducking carefully behind chunks of felled rubble while presenting their enemy with a relentless wall of gun barrels. Decades of training took over, legs assumed perfect ready stances that were admirable, even to other dire avengers. The unit had no exarch: just their lord.

Seventy meters away, the first shadows of the humans appeared, growing more distinct as their warcries grew louder. Like beasts they were, dressed in rags and waving guns and crude melee tools, shrieking praises to chaos into the sky. Their ferocity would have intimidated a human, but Asurmen coolly surveyed them, waiting. The dust cloud slowly disappeared behind a lashing sea of fanatics. Among them, Asurmen could see pieces of equipment taken from fallen Imperials.

"Away!" Asurmen commanded coldly. His order was met with the sing dozens of eldar guns. All the fanatics in his eyes fell to the floor, their bodies rended apart by alien shot. Heads fell off, flesh tore open as blades moving too quickly to see cut them up. Upstretched hands were amputated cleanly. A few fell dead with eldar disks buried in their ugly, sweaty forms, looks of rage still twisting their savage faces. Though every fanatic died, more came on to replace the dead.

To the amazement of any who might have spied on him, only the first rank of avengers fired. When they ran out of shots, they reloaded, and allowed the second rank to shoot. Not too much fire was sent at the enemy, so to conserve ammunition. But not too little was sent either. Swiftly, the humans stopped coming. The artillery resumed. Asurmen thanked fate that the first shell landed amidst the bodies of the fallen enemy, throwing them in all directions above a blossom of dust and debris.

"Back," Asurmen commanded as he and his noble warriors withdrew from the ruins, striding out of the shadow of the enemy guns. When a shell landed where they had been thirty seconds later, it hit only rubble and sent only rock into the air. Asurmen and his darting warriors left the heaving ground behind them, retreating to a bulky cathedral several streets down. Its door, flung open, was like the jaw of a black-skinned daemon with the two arching windows above it. The eldar battalion slunk into this structure to position themselves in as best a tacticle positon as they could.

Inside, eldar occupation was already apparent. The cultists who had once honoured this dishonourable place lay dead across the floor. Their blood had been spilt everywhere, from the long procession halls to the bell room at the cathedral's uppermost spire. The middle of the main hall was filled by an eldar structure that grew from the ground like a stone flower. It was made of wraithbone, and its builders were still adding to it. Resembling a leafless stem, waist high, and flowering multiple small orb-shaped lights, Asurmen knew it would allow the eldar greater clairvoyance. Similar stem-like structures sprouted from the ceiling and walls. In place of lights, they sprouted jewels like multicoloured fruit. These stones and their energies would ward off daemons and taint, far better than any holy trinket the superstitious Imperial mind could birth.

"Lord," Farseer Arkan'tiliu sang as she approached him, gliding upon slim feet as she took off her runed helm, "chaos approaches. We do not have time."

"I wish only for a single vision, one thread of certainty, to place us ahead of the enemy," replied Asurmen darkly. "We must hold this evil place. Calm your mind farseer, and show us what we must see. My warriors will not die nor flee until you do." Arkan'tiliu nodded and slipped her helmet back on, covering her shaved head with illuminated wraithbone.

"Phoenix Lord! They come!" a fearless voice called from the doorway. Arkan'tiliu flew to the side of her structure, directing its construction. The bonesingers weaved their magic, twisting wraithbone with a flutter of their fingers or a gesture of thought. Asurmen wished he could watch the wraithbone glide itself into the wonderous shape the singers worked to achieve, but that was their path. His was the path of the warrior. Lasgun fire drew him to the doors.

Storming to the doorway, Asurmen glared out. The script was written, the stage was set, and now the best of the eldar would do nothing but deliver their best performance to the symphony of death that awaited.

They came, first streaking out of holes in buildings, no different from giant profane army ants that scurried from mishappen holes in great black logs. From holes across the cathedral, rent by the energies of eldar weapons, the dire avengers laid fire upon the advancing foe. To the doomed cultists, it seemed that the black citadel before they had sprouted bright blue leaves, which were in face the muzzle flares of finely crafted avenger catipults. As before, humans fell apart without a single eldar so much as singed by human fire.

Asurmen did not underestimate his foe though, and when he searched the advancing humans, he looked for what else was lurking his way, thirsting for his soul. The answer, which he dreaded but expected none-the-less, appeared in the form of a great four-legged beast, skin as dark as the deep sea, with ivory tusks, a body the size of a tank, a dragging scorpion tail, and red eyes that could freeze water with their stare. Through a wall it came, sending rubble raining down onto cultist heads, crushing many. It raised its head to the sky and let out a howl, which made even Asurmen cover his ears. And from every shadow in sight, from every cave of rubble, from out of every alley, and barreling out of every dark hole in the bomb-pocked city, came a pack of other daemons.

Their bodies, shaped like goats, but at the size of a lion. Their faces were gaunt and skeletal, with deep-socketed moon eyes. Their teeth were daggers, their pawed feet carried steel claws that were sabers. Their hair was long, shaggy, and feral. In answer to the howl delivered by the leader of their pack, the monsters turned skyward as one and loosed a wolf howl that shattered the gems upon the wall. As the last cultist died, the pack stormed forwards, hungry teeth dripping with pastey drool. Eldar weapons, though mighty, were mortal. Of the pack of scores, five or six exploded into a nova of shadow and disappeared. But they came ever onward, closing the distance with frightening speed.

"Give us aid!" Asurmen heard a dive avenger call into his communication-rune. The phoenix lord knew no fear as he raised his fabled diresword and struck out at the first of the goat daemons to reach him. Its immaterial throat opened, and though smoke billowed from the wound, the creature did not react. Its fangs opened and pressed towards his face. Bringing the tip of one of his guns to the monster-s face, Asurmen fired, finishing the creature in an explosion of nothingness. He swung his shuriken catipult around to face a second daemon and sent it back to the warp before it could feast on a young aspect warrior who it was pouncing at. Were Asurmen faster he could have saved the youth from the second daemon, whose black claws parted the eldar's chest and tore him in two down the middle.

Madness quickly enveloped the chamber. Dire avengers cried their oaths of war and duty against the daemons, who leapt through the walls like ghosts to reach their mortal prey. Defensive stances were formed and dire avengers bunched up together to concentrate their efforts. Twenty of the best of them formed a phalanx about the bonesingers and the noble farseer, denying the daemons her soul with the ring of their shuriken catipults. Daemons flew apart all around the cathedral, yet it was too little. Where one died, there were still four remaining. These four would fall upon a phalanx of eldar and, with savage fangs and claws, rip their bodies apart. Beautiful dark blue armor was blackened by priceless blood. White shuriken catipults were stained bright red following the murderous swings of daemonic claws. Ten dire avengers died in as many seconds, with twenty already dead upon the flagstones. Only around the bonesingers were the eldar still unblooded. Asurmen saw to it without failure as his diresword passed through another daemon. Through the resulting black flash, he spied his next enemy as it finished off yet another eldar, blood invisible against its wet snout. Asurmen did not flinch as he put twin shurikens into the monster's eyes.

"Do not falter my kin! The day must be ours!" Asurmen cried to his brethren as the greater beast broke through the doorway in a landslide of black rock. Through the space it had broken, Asurmen beheld another black wave of racing goat daemons. Their howls mixed with the tragic death cries of fallen eldar. "The day must be ours!"

…

The bastion inside the heretical metropolis was like a single priest of the Emperor seated in the heart of a rabble of mutants, or a holy tome on a forgotten shelf deep inside a heretical church. Surrounded as they were by the loming spires of evil cathedrals and their leering windows, under a sky that wished to poison them, a bombed-out square many miles wide served the Imperial forces as a staging ground. Fighting raged on all sides and attacks on the perimeter were an omnipresent threat. Stains of humans milled around the city of tents under constant supervision by an ever-changing shift of inquisitorial personale. Purity seals and artifacts with the purpose of warding off taint were as common as the grains of sand underfoot. From vox-sets, a constant sermon to the Emperor rang. Some members of the Ecclesiarchy had resorted to attempt to bless this tainted soil. They still patrolled its edges, humming an ancient hymn while another sprinkled the hot sand with powdered silver.

It had been here, nested within the protective shell of a resting thunderhawk, where a meditating Usoran had experienced his next vision.

Once again, the humbling indignity of changing to the child he had been was given to him. Those peasant clothes, those sandals, and, perhaps worst of all, the helpless flesh of an ordinary human. Alas, it was all he was in the eyes of his primarch and he gladly allowed it as he lifted his tiny form up onto the chair that appeared in his vision.

It was his home, the Lion had manifested the two of them into Usoran's boyhood homestead once again. He bowed his head to the angel that sat across from him. This time though, his face was hard, perhaps scolding, and his fists were tight.

"Have I offended you?" begged Usoran.

"No my son," replied the angel. "Your time, though, it is upon you. As you exist right now, there happens a situation of the greatest urgency. The eldar, they have come to Dis."

"I hear the rumors of aliens helping out our troops on other worlds," Usoran replied. "I am tempted to accept it."

"There is wisdom in that choice, for I believe it shall be they, not the Imperium, who will find where Abaddon hides. But one of the greatest of the eldar fights for his soul now against a tide of chaos, battling to buy time for a farseer to divine the location of any members of the accursed traitor legions upon Dis. To his aid, immediarely." Usoran felt his armor around him. Looking down, he beheld his true form restored, complete with his Astartes gear. "You can do this Usoran. You have proven yourself a great warrior with the Lion Sword. Go, it will point your way. Follow its path for ninety-nine miles."

"What?"

Usoran had spoken the word to the interior of his thunderhawk. Where he remembered sitting down to meditate, he now stood on his pillar feet while his hands carried his primarch's sword, holding its tip out. Usoran understood immediately and made note of which direction he was pointing the Lion Sword.

Less than an hour later, the thunderhawk was soaring across the daemon world's rusty sand dunes, heading to a cathedral city ninety-nine miles north.

…

"Hold! The craftword will not flicker this day!" Asurmen yelled to the stagnant air as his sword clove through the neck of a human of chaos. Bright blood fountained up from the cut neck as the robed man collapsed like a dropped puppet. Swinging the blade in a circle, he drove its unbreakable tip into the heaving chest of a tall cultist that rushed him with an axe whose head could split a rock. The dead man collapsed, his eyes rolled back into his head, to join the fleshy carpet of his fallen comrades around Asurmen's nimble feet.

Nine eldar remained.

The entire strike force had diverted themselves to his aid and the aid of their most important piece of information. They had defended the cathedral from daemons until it was ashes. They had fought in the streets against waves of fanatics. Their singing guns sprayed human guts across the street. Piles of bloody meat scattered around the streets and cultists rushed in, eager to join it. Asurmen never dropped his sword, even as his dire avengers were martyred. He did not stop as the lost of them let out a shrill cry of pain and loss as the jagged tip of a rusty sword violated his throat and spilt his lifeblood across his blue-armored chest, painting it black. Asurmen did not relent as more warriors of the craftworlds joined him to defend the injured farseer: whose legs were bitten from her by slavering daemonic jaws. He did not stop fighting even as those who came to his aid were diminished agonizingly.

"AH!"

The cry heralded the loss of another one of his people: forever reducing the ranks of the eldar race. Precious blood was being wasted all around him in the depths of this ruined basilica where they now stood against the chaos horde. Cultists scrambled over dead bodies to loose ugly bullets into eldar faces behind the collapsed wrecks of daemonic statues and short stone walls. In the basilica's very center, Asurmen stood, the farseer lying by his feet, sheltered in the embrace of a slain falcon grav tank with two dark reaper exarchs.

"The outside has fallen. Our warriors wane," Asurmen said to the farseer, "soon they will collapse the walls of our people and spill in upon us." He shot a cultist between they eyes as it rushed the wrecked tank. Already there were too many holes in the defensive ring around them. The eldar were dying. Humans were free to rush across the basilica and attack him.

"My lord," said a dark reaper in his deep voice, "I am out of shot. My cannon is useless now." Asurmen ignored the exarch and looked out across the basilica. His ancient mind was shaken everytime his eyes passed across the fallen shape of a noble eldar warrior, lying in a ruby puddle of their own death. Asurmen caught sight of a short wall where a hideous human mutant had pinned a guardian. With crab claws, it tore the young soldier's helmet off, showing a beautiful example of an eldar girl beneath. No older than three decades. The fullness of her beautiful red hair and her staring green eyes was soon to be lost forever. Asurmen shot the mutant, but only as it tore that beautiful face from the eldar's head. Pearly bone shone through flaps of bleeding red flesh. One of her eyes had burst. Blood squirting from her neck, the dying youth fell. A nearby guardian rushed to her, cradled her in the heat of battle and shrieked. He was evidently a sibling or even a beloved twin by the similarity that his fresh features had to her's, visible when he removed his helmet. Abruptly his head snapped forward and dark brain matter sprayed from his skull. He collapsed over his blood-kin, to grow cold and rot alongside her.

"I hear him," whispered the farseer.

"AHHH! Isha's tears…I'm hurt!" came a frantic cry from far off.

Asurmen shot another human cultist as he stormed the wreck. From his belt hung ten severed fingers of ten different eldar warriors. The blood was still wet.

"They're coming! We join our ancestors if we do not fall back!" This was followed by a shattering explosion that carried body parts into the air. Most of them were human, but some…

"Asurmen, even if it must be in this evil place, I would be honored to die defending you," one of the other exarchs said, firing the last of his launcher's shots at an unseen target behind a collapsed statue. They were quickly joined by three bloodied guardians. One was missing an arm.

"You do not defend me, but her," replied Asurmen, pointing to the farseer. "Her powers enable her further. Hold…" one of the guardians was hit, blood spraying from his helmet. He fell back. "…as a leaf holds in the wind. Hold!" Asurmen fired out at a trio of charging humans.

"I hear him," repeated the farseer. "I hear him." Asurmen leaned into her.

"Abaddon? Where is he?" Asurmen inquired.

"No, the other. This death…I can hear him. I can see him." The farseer turned her helmeted head to ground that marked the center of the wreck's scattered interior. And there he was. The surviving guardians didn't notice him, but the exarchs did. They recoiled their heads in awe and a hint of fright at he who sat there.

Shaped like an eldar. Black cloaked. Black masked. No eyes. Cross-legged. Asurmen felt a shudder of fear chill his immortal soul and he dared ask him the question.

"Is it time?"

The simple gesture that followed assured Asurmen that it was not. Then, the cloaked one pointed skyward. Asurmen heard the thunderhawk moments before he saw it.

And the black cloak was gone.

…

Like rats from light they scattered. Back to their dark hovels, to their crypts, to their unholy shrines, to whatever cess pit was unfortunate enough to stomach their filthy hides. It was a shame that, as they fled, the thunderhawk expended consecrated rounds of bolter fire to slay those cultist not fast enough to vanish at their approach. Each bolt was more valuable than two of those lost men.

"Xenos, sir?" asked one of Usoran's battle-brothers.

"Yes. Give me one moment," Usoran replied as he stepped off. What he found was a slaughterhouse. Though it did the Imperium good for eldar to lie dead, the scene still carried a hint of tragedy. The only survivors were, as far as Usoran could see, a huddled group in the middle of the basilica, hiding amidst the black wreck of a xenos skiff.

Rising up, the leader approached him. He was a tall warrior, noble, and draped in a silver cape. Atop his head: a crested helmet. Usoran nodded and nothing more.

"It has been fate that has guaranteed that the information I have has survived long enough to reach Imperial hands," the other said. "Astartes, I do not expect your cooperation or your understanding, but I can tell you this: you must leave this planet."

"Why?" Usoran demanded coldly and simply. The look the alien gave to the air behind him prompted him to turn over his shoulder. The thunderhawk had trained its turret onto the alien. With a wave, Usoran dismissed the threat. For now.

"One of my people, she is dead now. But in her mind, with the help our secret art, she has seen the width and breadth of this evil world. There are none from the fallen space marines here. Abaddon is gone," replied the alien. "Your war here is a waste of sweat and of blood. Abaddon is not here." Usoran's initial look of doubt drove the alien on the defense.

"Human, she was the last of us who could use the method. The art is lost with her. Regard what I have said to you and withdraw," he did not plead, he was probably incapable of doing do. No, his voice commanded Usoran heavily. "If you do not wish the galaxy to know eternal hell, then leave. Fate would not have brought you here to be lied to." Usoran only nodded. It all made sense.

"I will spread your words," the Dark Angel said. "But I cannot take you with me. You will have to find survival yourself." The tense meeting ended quickly and Usoran returned to his thunderhawk.

Abaddon wasn't on Dis, Usoran was certain of it after the alien had spoken to him. The sword…his primarch, had led him here. This was no lie.

…

Within his ship, atop a throne of grey stone, Abaddon sit and glared at the holographic chart opposite him. The reddish runes upon the device assured him that they were over halfway to Terra. Ahriman's voice was still fresh in his head:

"No one pursues us. Chaos will have total surprise my lord."

Abaddon could feel the memories returning to him. Of Terra when Horus attacked, of that sweet and glorius time when the Imperium had almost collapsed forever. Horus' murder of the Imperium had been too incomplete. Abaddon flexed the talon upon his armor: the Talon of Horus, directly from the primarch's armor. He squeezed the blade fingers and imagined them closing around the neck of the corpse upon the Golden Throne.

"I swear, to the screaming warp," Abaddon told the hollow walls of the empty chamber, "I will make it happen."


	34. Clashing Ideas

Cadia

Once the heart of defiance against the warp, now it was a corrupt bastion of madness that stood at the head of Abaddon's flock of daemon worlds. Its surface, once jeweled with the busy activity of its rich cities, now a damnable parody of all the Imperium was. Shrines to chaos replaced temples. The proud kasr of Cadia were all gone, their places filled by shantytowns filled with teeming legions of subhuman mutants. In the interval between the rise from the warp and the Imperial invasion, the mutants had organized themselves into armies, all the while showing remarkable regimentation for the worthless dregs that their enemies took them for. Parades of gibbering beast-people dotted the slums. Mobs of uniformed mutants performed drills in areas designated for the purpose. Officers oversaw morale and disciplined shortcomings with draconian force. Prayers to the chaos gods were steadily recited as part of each units' daily rites. It was, to the finest administrative detail, a mirror image of the classic Imperial Guard regiment.

It was therefore an amazement to the invasion fleet, which had promised its infantry an easy time of shooting down waves of unarmed fanatics, to encounter such a drilled and well-trained garrison. Across the plains around the slums, armored regiments fought armored regiments, often with the same type of machines. In the streets, feral firefights painted the ground red. Stormtroopers of the Imperial Guard competed with chaos commandos, with eyes that were sharpened by Tzeench, hands strengthened Khorne, skin sensitized by Slaanesh, and nerves numbed by Nurgle. In the skies, the Imperial Navy dueled ferociously with a heretical fleet calling itself 'The Angels of Cadia". It was truly a terrible insult to Imperial commanders to hear the word of the beloved world being used by heretics.

The Angels of Cadia: the enemy. The galaxy had fallen far.

Now, months after the first Imperial foot had come to liberate Cadia, both sides were locked in a desperate war of attrition. Within its apex lay the Serpent's Lair, thus far pure from Imperial attacks. Across the planet, three theaters of war played out their fiery plots. At first, it was only Imperial units battling chaos. As the conflict progressed reports stemmed in from the front that the eldar had come to intervene. They were scant at first: a glimpsed warrior here, a burning chaos convoy there, that could be easily denied. But soon formations of jetbikes hunted chaos across the rooftops and whole waves of aspect warriors battled and died alongside Imperial ground forces. Even the astartes chapters who had come to Cadia to hunt for Abaddon were forced to accept their aid.

…

Galvantr's orders were clear. From tank to tank, the orders of their commander flew to the whole of the Chazzan 729th armored regiment. Ahead of them, the ridge lay like a wall, ready to absorb their sledgehammer attack. All that young Lynx Rossus could do was squeeze his rubber-chew between his teeth to squeeze the last ounces of flavor from it. It dawned on him that the tang of lemon might be the last thing he'd ever taste.

"Armored legion, forward! For Chazz, for the Emperor!" bellowed the deep voice of commander Galvantr into his headset. Behind him, the driver gunned the tank's noisy engines while the sweat-faced engineer chanted the rites of accuracy over an unfired shell. The tank shook and the leman russ drove forward.

"Remember, no retreat!" added the voice of the regimental commissar into his headset. There was a running joke amongst the 729th that this man, commissar Enereus, sat in a tank destroyer in the rear, cannon ready to wreck any fleeing vehicles. It was funny in the mess hall. Out here, it made Lynx wretch.

'Why did they put us in the first wave?' he thought. Not even the Imperial Navy had been here. This was virgin ground. Lynx looked up the ridge as they climbed it, one of over one hundred and fifty machines. His imagination placed a vast legion of waiting chaos warriors on the opposite side of the ridge.

They crossed the ridge. There they were.

Immediately, the nearest tank exploded, flaming wreckage sailing in all directions. Lynx chewed his rubber-chew vigorously and aimed the cannon. Through the curtain of exploding shells, he could see the landing zone.

Far below upon the base of the hill was a complex of armored bunkers. Lines of flak batteries defended each: enough gun to frighten away the air force. Amongst those bunkers were static gun emplacements. They carried long-snouted earthshaker guns and threw shells relentlessly into the hillside. Behind them lay a vast square of flat land. Twenty or so heretical aircraft sat at rest within it. Lynx could not see the remainder of his loyal unit. The only Imperial vehicle in his sights lay in flame and smoke. All he saw were enemy guns.

Taking aim, he recited the five worded prayer of accuracy: "With the Emperor's strength: kill." He fired. All around him he heard the guns of his fellows. Bolters, battle cannons and the snap of lascannons. His shell added to the wave of destruction that reached the foe. The bunkers were lost from view behind a rolling black cloud. Lynx had little time to admire the view as he was soon rolling down the hill.

He felt someone below him slap his leg. Another shell for the battle cannon was loaded. He was no longer chewing his rubber-chew, so much as chattering his teeth on it. The raw destruction before him brought the young gunner as much a sense of excitement as it did add to his growing fear. As his fellow tanks hurled more shells into the smoke to clear out survivors, Lynx wondered where the rest of the enemy was. The briefing had been clear. So where was the other armored regiment?

"Mob," was the correction from the commissar when the briefing named the enemy. "Good Imperials come in regiments. Weak heretics move in mobs." Mob or not, Lynx would still be dead if one of their cannons wrecked his machine.

They entered the black cloud. Through the corner of his eye, Lynx saw a bright orange light that cast a glare through the darkness. The hellhounds were at work. Lynx squeezed his controls, his heart beating madly, promising himself that the enemy was not waiting in the darkness. The sound of a battle cannon found his ears once or twice and heavy bolter shots rattled off in a string somewhere to his right. Lynx clenched his teeth and prepared to confront the foe. He imagined how he would shoot. He imagined where he would aim. He imagined how it would feel to score his first kill. If those tanks on his flank had found the enemy then he should too, by the Emperor.

But he did not. He emerged from the cloud on the other side of the bunker complex, now leveled by the Chazzan tanks. The aircraft lay ahead of him. His tank stopped and four hellhounds came into his view, moving ahead to burn the enemy machines. He could imagine the phalanx of tanks now: lined up just out of sight on his left and on his right.

Then, from the naked ground, they came. A small fury of insectoid…things. They were like mines but their rims carried fleshy grafts that ended in long talons that shone like black ivory. His impression of them was a spider-legged mine. He could briefly catch sight of reddish runes scrawled across their dirty surfaces as they jumped up onto the hellhounds. In horror, Lynx witnessed the hellhounds get coated by these daemon mines before disappearing in the detonation. Lynx ducked back from his gun camera and shut his eyes, returning quickly when he was sure his machine too would not meet the same fate. Even over the noisy engine, he heard his commander spit a curse.

Then, a great windstorm split the calm air. Brown grass was uprooted and dust thickened the clear sky. There had been no wind that morning. This was not natural. It was a genuine dust devil. Lynx felt the tank rumble backwards and he searched the land ahead of him for signs of the enemy. All he saw though was the tan haze of the wind. Around him, the other machines of his regiment were falling back.

"Enemy contacts, it's the chaos armor we were warned about," beeped someone over his headset. Lynx couldn't identify who it was through his sickly anticipation of the carnage to come. He wiped his sweating brow and felt his chest grow light.

The first enemy came. Never had he seen such an ugly sight as what emerged from behind the dust storm's curtain. It was a blackish-blue in colour with a white trim. Its turret was well-rounded with a pair of lascannons protruding from its snout. Sponsons carried more lascannons. Its armored hull was dressed in spikes and a green insignia of a three-headed serpent. It was a predator.

Before Lynx could even shoot, lascannon shots lit up the dust. This tank was only one of many hidden amongst the dust. Hot lances of energy scythed into the column. Fire leapt up somewhere to Lynx's right. A panicking voice from the headset coloured ears before going dead. Men were dying! He could be next!

Without thinking, Lynx sent a battle cannon round into the predator's hull. Smoke and sparks leapt up from the other tank, but he saw to his dismay that he had only snapped some of its hull-mounted spikes. He felt his tank roll back. The chaos tank vanished into the dust as a plume of fire leapt from its left-side sponson. Someone else had hit it.

Lynx felt a slap on his leg to tell him the cannon was reloaded just as the tank drew back to the bunkers. In front of him, lying where they were wrecked, were the singed and flaming wrecks of four of his comrades. The Chazzan insignia lay in plain sight on one of them, surrounded by orange flames. It was a disheartening sight. He could see four other leman russ battle tanks. They were standing fast and fighting, shooting into the dust. The others lay around him.

'Predators,' he thought, 'Astartes tanks. Why me?' More lascannon shots leapt out from the dust. More shouts came over his headset. More flames leapt up from friendly machines. Lynx fired into the dust, knowing he probably shouldn't have. He felt a slap on his leg moments later.

"Everyone: take cover," came the command from Galvantr's voice. "Hide in the ruins. Draw them out."

Obeying the words of their commander, the commander barked orders to the driver. Their cover was a collapsed compound of great size. Lynx counted nine other tanks with him.

Now comes the waiting. The long, terrible waiting,

…

The world below them looked so insignificant. The sharp-eyed scanners of the eldar fleet had detected no cities beyond the mere shanty towns and few important geographical features. Cadia didn't even feel like a daemon world. Its dry land sustained little life and could sweep up into blinding storms at any moment, but besides this there was little upon Cadia. Why then did five million eldar warriors go there?

That was the question that Nattann'tis contemplated as he surveyed the world below him from the bridge of his cruiser. The question was, of course, to find Abaddon. But Nattann'tis had seen the casualty lists and shuddered at each. They were dying like humans down there: fifteen thousand here, twenty thousand there, and one hundred new incidents everytime he investigated. They could not afford the war of attrition.

Nattann'tis, like all the other wardens of the fleet, had it all explained to him before he left the craftworld. This was their final battle. All the wrath of the craftworlds would be spent fighting chaos. It would spring up across the galaxy and every eldar would fight it. Those without weapons: the young and the lame, would resist through the sheer strength of their souls against the tidal wave of taint that was flushing through the galaxy. Stories of daemonic possession upon the craftworlds were reaching his ears.

'Why like this?' wondered Nattann'tis, feeling no pride in witnessing Rhana Dandra. 'Why did it have to end like this?'

Nattann'tis, like all the other wardens of the fleet and indeed like every eldar of significant station, had been told of the fate that the farseers had foreseen.

Extinction.

'Why like this?' he wondered one last time as the runes of his fate formed themselves upon his crystal eyepiece. Orders straight from the craftworld. He was to go to the Slaaneshi world and join the imminent invasion.

…

With a thunder of treads, the tanks left cover to slam into the chaos tanks and drive them from sight. Lynx had chewed his rubber-chew to shreds now. His brow was wetter than the inside of his mouth. He thought of nothing but the battle as his machine left cover. To his left was a leman russ and to his right was a hellhound Ahead of him, two hundred meters at least, was a phalanx of predators, now visible without the dust devil. His gut felt weak as he counted them. His fellows outnumbered them, but lacked the solid coherency of the formation Lynx beheld. He saw imperial shells fall short of their victims. The predators returned fire.

Lynx's heart skipped a beat when he saw the front of his tank get carved into by a hot round of lasfire. Metal turned orange with heat and paint chipped away. Their beast was wounded but bucking onward. Lynx did not have time to admire the work the other predators had done. As he watched, the predators fell back in a disciplined formation shaped like a giant V. These chaos tanks shot all their weapons, even shooting through gaps between friendly machines to hit the Imperials. Despite their formation, it seemed each tank could shoot. Already the predators were forming another position.

"Fire!" the commander was yelling. Lynx fired a shell but was left in doubt to its effect. To his left, they passed a burning leman russ. He felt a slap on his leg again. He fired and saw a predator fly apart in a hail of shrapnel. But he hadn't been aiming at it, so it was not his kill. They passed through an explosion. Friendly fire? They rolled over a bump. Lynx saw a predator flipped onto its side by the violence of a blast that he was sure had come from an earthshaker. They passed another burning friendly. Where was that hellhound to their right? Lynx fired again. Everything was happening so freakishly quickly!

"FIRE FIRE FIRE!!" his commander was yelling. Lynx remembered he had been slapped in the leg once more but had not fired the shot for ten seconds. He couldn't even hear himself think as he aimed his gun at a retreating predator. There was so much noise inside the cabin.

"Shoot!"

Lynx fired just as they passed the first wrecked chaos tank. He thought he saw one of the retreating predators lose its main turret. His work? He hoped so.

The predators had lost half their number. Whatever they had done to the Imperials, there were simply too many guard tanks. The disciplined drills the chaos crews had was nothing when faced with the awesome firepower of this Chazzan armored regiment. Those ugly predators burned, twisted amongst pools of fire. Lynx even spotted dead crewmen, dressed in blackish blue power armor, lying amongst the wrecks. The heretics had surely lost. He saw a few of them fire their lascannons and were answered with a roar of falling shells. Two predators exploded, sending lethal shrapnel in all directions.

Rising out the ground came another dust devil. Initially, Lynx took it to be the dust cast off by exploding shells, but it rose too high and remained too long. He clenched his teeth and fired one last shell at the cowardly heretics.

"Cowards," he sneered towards the distant predators. "You're cowards!" His heart was pounding and the exhilaration of a victory turned fear to bravado. He began to laugh. "I thought we were fighting chaos. But you're a bunch of cowards!" Lynx laughed as the dust devil blew away to show the predators had vanished. Five tanks: four enemies and one friendly burned in his field of view. The violence of their deaths, hinted at by the damage ripped out onto their steel carapaces added to his victorious excitement.

"We got them, boys," said the commander with a sigh. "Well done."

"I took a turret," Lynx immediately said, eager to flaunt his victory. "I took a turret right off one. Boom! I took a turret."

It was just another unhappy day on Cadia.


	35. Rhana Dandra

Cherondessorar

Any and all information concerning the invasion fleet was classified. Offiial Imperial records insisted that the blockade of heretical ships over the planet was too thick to commence an immediate landing and that the invasion would commence as soon as the heretics were clear. But what the records show and what was actually true were two different things. In reality, the entire first wave of the invasion, or ten million men and their vehicles, had been corrupted by the tainted world. In one fell stroke, they succumbed to the world's promises and betrayed their mission. They sided with the heretical defenders of the world's few cities. Tiny garrisons exploded in numbers as traitors from the fleet flooded into them, stripping off their flak jackets and painting symbols of the pleasure god upon their bare flesh. The world, as scantily defended as anyone in the fleet could have hoped for, was now much more formidable. New battle plans had to be drawn as all their old ones were betrayed to chaos. Months passed while the embarrassed and deeply frustrated Imperial fleet's staff drew up new plans. Their dream was to see every bare inch of the world turned to ash. Unfortunately, they lacked the firepower.

While the fleet rebuilt itself and sized up the nut below them, deciding how to crack it, a few officers said a few things to a few ignorant officers and the news of Cherondessorar was all fabricated for when the time came to make their report.

All the while, Cherondessorar sat below them, flawless, while its enchanted defenders enjoyed pleasant days in the arms of daemonettes. All were willing to die to defend this paradise in Slaanesh's name. But when the day came, when the first bombs fell from the sky, the invaders proved not to be Imperial. As marble statues were blown apart, laser lances raked the beautiful surface, and flames leapt from the fleshy forests, the shapes of eldar craft darkened the sky.

Much to the Imperium's amazement, waves of disciplined eldar were suddenly rushing out of landing craft or swinging across the daemon world's surface in speeding grav-tanks. To those who knew the eldar, it seemed that all their warriors were together in one place. One hundred eldar was considered a good sized gathering and one thousand was worth one hundred times as many humans. No one could have guessed that countless thousands, or even millions, or eldar could have shown to contest the planet. As eldar forces battled mindless pleasure-stricken slaves and numberless daemonettes across Cherondessorar, the Imperium seemed ready to remain on the sidelines and gather their power in peace.

And upon the surface, the battles raged. Some battles, the eldar won.

But some they lost.

…

They were silent.

Fifty-three harlequins: an entire troupe. They remained in their tableau in the center of the valley of skin. The ground bled wherever it had been broken, thus coating the ground in a thin swamp of crimson, just a few shades lighter than the pink clouds above, which hid flocks of eldar fighters that dueled murders of human aircraft high in the stratosphere. The only testimony to their violent dance was the occasiona flash of light, peeping through the cloud cover.

The scene around them was one of great disgust. Eldar warriors lay dead everywhere alongside their wrecked vehicles. Burning grav-tanks lay beside fallen jetbikes. Bodies were mangled, torn open, and dismembered. Every fallen trooper's spiritstone had been hastily removed and stashed in the center of the valley, forming a hilltop of glass.

Amongst the fallen eldar lay three times as many humans. Some still wore the uniforms of the Imperial military but most were naked fanatics. Their hairy bodies were elegantly split and cut, in stark contrast to the messy work their guns had made of the eldar. Even their wrecked vehicles appeared unharmed. An inspection of their interior would reveal that these wrecks were empty shells: the work of a distort cannon. The battery of cannon that had perpetrated their destruction presently lay in a garden of fire somewhere to the harlequins' right.

None of the harlequins moved. Silent and deadly enemies of Slaanesh and all she was, they awaited their foes with dicipline. Their colourful costumes lit up the horror around them like a candle. Bright checker-patterns and long flowing topknots was an attractive difference in this valley of butchery. Many wore pale masks that smiled cheerlessly onward. There was no doubt though, from their exotic postures, these warrior-dancers could only have been smiling beneath their makeup.

Cresting the hill, they came: the reason the eldar had been destroyed here. First one, then two, then five, then ten. They were the pride of Slannesh's garden and the terrors of his servants. They were giants, dressed in the best and armed with the deadliest. They were the noise marines of the Emperor's Children. No less than twenty of them, thus outnumbered, but twenty astartes was a worry even for the harlequins especially if they had support.

With a powerful gesture from their leader and a warcry that split the nerves, from the others, the noise marines were joined by a tide of crazed fanatics that washed over the crest of the hill and down into the valley towards the harlqeuins, who were now themselves outnumbered. Tens to one, perhaps hundreds to one, by these slavering madmen. Lasfire and autofire sliced clumsily down at the troupe. Cleavers and knives waved in the air. The noise marines gasped in ecstasy as they pumped fresh drugs into their bodies and prepared for the final attack. They came forward with the chaos horde, their sirens wailing shrill shrieks that even stunned a number of the lesser chaos lunatics. But the harlequins held firm, still in tableau. It was not until a rocket hissed their way that they began to move.

The troupe broke up as a dusty explosion blossomed in their midst. Though their movement appeared hasty, they still managed to maintain a sense of purpose in their every move. Their intelligent dispersal looked choreographed and rehearsed. As the harlequins ducked and dodged lasfire to reach the enemy horde, a casual observer might wonder if this was really a battle and not an elaborate performance.

Like razor silk, the harlequins cut into the chaos horde. They were everywhere at once, cutting down their enemies with elegance and grace, moving from one to the next, cartwheeling and prancing. They did not fire their pistols madly, but either when pressed against a human's face or backwards, when they arched their backs to take a shot upside down and always with total accuracy. The clumsy humans were too slow to hit the dancing eldar with their guns and, at first, too confused to spot them surely enough to strike them dead with their ugly blades. Within moments, the leaping harlequins had gone through much of the chaos horde, leaving twitching corpses in their wake.

The first harlequin died after the ninety-nineth human was killed. She was a elegant figure that could dodge eight lasrounds. She could not, however, dodge the nineth: no mortal could have: there was no room to move. She still landed on her feet and completed a flawless bow to a hostile audience before being beheaded.

Another elegant harlequin drove his spear into the heart of a slavering fanatic, who still wore his commissar's cap. The harlequin was able to jump, holding onto the spear and kick a shouting human in the jaw before landing at the feet of three noise marines who trained their weapons onto him. He only had time to bow to them before their weapons fired. The harlequin died as the sheer volume of noise shattered his nerves.

For a moment, it looked like the mob of worshippers had lost. Their dead were piled like firewood on the ground and more were swiftly joining them as the eldar danced further. Some of the humans even tried to flee. Could the ceaseless horde truly be stopped now? Eldar blades flashed and human blood flew. Human bodies hit the floor. Heads soared above the crowd like leering birds. The barely diminished harlequins might have made it.

While the lesser humans panicked, the harlequins counted their kills, for each knew this was their last fight. They knew they could not win and so did the noise marines. Though the worshippers were falling in number, there were still hundreds standing. Quickly, more eldar died. A lucky shot took one here, a stabbing shank split an eldar neck there, and in the middle three eldar died hand in hand: a ring-shaped pile of eighty dead humans around them. But they all bowed before death.

From cultist to cultist, one harlquin flew. When an autogun round shattered his skull, he dropped to the floor, ducking his shattered head before falling forward in as good a bow as anyone could give. Another harlequin lost a leg to a flying chainsword. She landed on one foot and bowed to her murderer with all the flamboyance of an actress on stage. Their masks were being shattered by flying shots and their limbs were cut from them. But still, no matter how hard the hordes tried, they couldn't stop the eldar from bowing.

The master of the troupe knew his warriors were dying as he leapt over the head of a surprised human to dive on a noise marine. His ancient sword drove into the marine's chest while he pressed his face up to the marine's helmet. Beside his face, he held a severed human head: the man he'd jumped over. The look of surprise was still there.

The enraged noise marine raised his doom blaster and giggled at the excitement and pleaure of the fight, looking happily down at his agonizing wound. The harlequin was too quick: beheading the noise marine in a flick of his blade. With one hand, he threw the head into the face of a nearby noise marine to stun him, then he took the helmet of the fallen space marine and threw it into the air: the rallying signal. All the harlquins moved to converge on it.

The stunned marine recovered from his stun in time to be shot.

The warriors of the Emperor's Children had bunched together and were thus easy targets for the harlequins to target as a group. They came bounding in, breaking through the humans to attack these daemonic supermen. Some died: shot in the back. They retained enough dexterity to deliver a perfect bow before crumbling to the floor.

First, a prancing harlquin landed on the head of a leering noise marine. The eldar leapt off to join his troupe master, taking the man's head with him. Next, a cartwheeling harlequin fluttered in. Ten others carved their ways out of the swirling mess of corrupted humans. Three more bounded down over human heads and landed in unison around the master. When it was all over, thirty-one harlequins were posed there in a circle around the troupe master, glaring at the Slaaneshi marines. Time stood still for a moment as the two groups faced off.

With a slender clap of his hands, the troupe master signaled the others to attack. They broke apart again to engage the Emperor's Children. The shrieks of the noise marine's vile weapons filled the air.

Harlquin guns flashed, swords swung, colourful warriors leapt. Lesser humans cried out and grabbed their heads while the lithe eldar warriors showed no pause. But the relentless attacks of the Slaaneshi marines did not waver and soon, mind-numbed harlequins fell to the floor, bowing as they fell.

Harlequins and noise marines piled up. Where the corrupt humans had been like calves, these ferocious giants of pleasure were red-eyed bulls. They fired their sonic weaponry accurately, striking harlequins from the air. No longer did chaos suffer dozens dead to massacre a single eldar: now they delivered a death to each one that burdened them. Eldar masks shattered, well-shot lasrounds spilt alien blood. Swords were dropped, leaps were violently ended, and eldar bowed.

Soon, only the troupe master himself remained. He bounded fiercely over the falling body of the second-last noise marine and set his eyes on the last member of the dreaded Emperor's Children. He was a tall man in the same wicked armor that covered the rest of his warband. His helmet looked like a tube-mouthed monster, sporting a pastel topknot of hair. He brought his cumbersome sonic blaster towards the eldar. Leaping and prancing, the troupe master passed nimbly past two corrupt humans, spilling their throats on the way. With no other targets, he was swamped by humans that closed in on all sides to deny him his prize. The troupe master did not manage to dodge all the dagger thrusts and axe chops as the naked madmen closed in around him. Blood trailing from three deep wounds, he bounded over their heads, his sword in both hands. His eyes, whose vision was clouded with pain from the sonic weaponry, were locked onto the noise marine, who was presently trying to aim at the leaping harlequin. He was too slow.

Like lightning, the eldar landed atop the noise marine. He took his sword and, atop the giant's shoulders, danced his grand finale of cuts and kicks. He took the marine's ears to deny him the pleasure of hearing and his eyes to steal his sight and severed his spine to deny him sensation. Finally, a long swipe denied the fallen marine the pleasure of existence. The harlequin cartwheeled off the noise marine, who's dead body fell backwards. The whole display had taken five seconds.

Landing on his feet, the troupe master gave a magnificent bow to the barrels of guns pointing his way. He didn't even try to dodge them. His job was done: he had protected the spiritstones long enough.

In the center of the valley, the collected pile of spiritstones turned transluscent and vanished: reclaimed by their native craftworld.

And then it was silent again.

But then, suddenly, they came. Bounding, leaping giants, storming into the valley. They were not eldar nor imperial and initially the cultists took them to be fellow Slanneshi, if somewhat malformed. They were not.

The harlequins before them had moved through the cultists like a razor silk. These new killers were a sledgehammer. Not a single human escaped them.

…

"Exhalted autarch, farseer, or any who can hear me, our position is under assault by unknown assailants. They're attacking both sides. We're…" the voice was interrupted by the sing of a shuriken pistol. "Send the finest warriors you can muster to our immediate aid. These newcomers, they look like giant humans." Again, the voice was interrupted: this time by breaking metal. It continued for the rest of the short transmission, dimming the voice. "I fear we are lost. Giant humans, in powered armor like space marines, but with claws." Weaponsfire erupted in the background. "Be warned, they are fast! Hasten!"

…

The farseers had seen the coming of a fourth party into the battle for this daemon world, though nothing had yet been reported until now. Of the nature of the fourth party, the farseers had their suspicions, but many doubts arose over every guess. When the strike force that had moved against the humans inside the vast forested mountains of ecstasy were wiped out, it fell to the greatest warriors of the craftworlds to confirm the identity of the new foe. After pulsar fire destroyed great swathes of the fleshy forests, the wave serpents swept in.

Fire leapt up from the naked earth as the blackened, burning remains of hundreds of daemonic trees lay dead amidst the flattened patch of forest. No smoke rose from this fire: Slaanesh would not allow something so ugly on his world. Fuegan could not help but feel that as he stepped from his wave serpent, Slaanesh had her eyes on him.

Three square kilometers of forest was gone. More wave serpents touched down and patrols of vipers swept along the perimeter, scanning the treeline for signs of the enemy. Crisp flesh crackled underneath his mighty tread as he stepped across the ruin towards the position of the eldar outpost that had been destroyed. No fear gripped his heart and his face was calm behind his masked helmet. Like a fire in a garden, he stood out. No fire dragons stood nearby to accompany him. The Phoenix Lord Fuegan was alone.

"No contact, my lord," said the grim voice of the force's pathfinder as he joined Fuegan.

"The Burning Lance obliterated by the burning lance," murmured Fuegan enigmatically to the wind. He rolled the possibility over in his mind. "No, not here," he concluded confidently.

"Lord?" The pathfinder was eager to be spoken to. He could be forgiven for such an idle pleasure: he was young.

"The striking scorpions will be the first in. Flank their advance with your rangers and skirmish ahead," Fuegan stated, "I will not have us enter an ambush unprepared." A sliver of silver-armored guardians stepped past him. Guardians, rangers, vipers and striking scorpions were his instruments of war on this day. Fuegan had played this song before, though not to this particular tune. He hoped to Khaine that he was a competent enough musician to carry the day.

With the presicion of a surgeon, the force advanced into the forest, Fuegan at their head. It would not be his day to die; he vowed it.

Their advance was done to perfection, but it was punished none-the-less. It was punished when they entered the region where their fellows had died to find a sight of nightmares. The trees and the forest was awash with the bodies of slain eldar. They had not merely been cut down. Their exposed bones and severed bodies confirmed Fuegan's fears. He knelt down over a ravaged guardian and inspected the teeth marks upon its crushed helmet. Fangs: a beast. What space marines could have done this and why would they attack both sides? Over and over again, returning parties of rangers reported scenes of death closer towards the mountain. They told of heaps of Slaaneshi troops, gnawed and killed in the same manner as these defiled eldar. Fuegan saw that each spiritstone was extracted.

"What are your orders?" asked the young pathfinder to Fuegan as he stood in the midst of the daemonic grove, contemplating their situation and the evidence he had seen. Why did the farseers not know what these were? He had heard the rumors of tyranids plainly enough, but why then did the doomed transmission tell of space marines?

"It could be him," he whispered to himself as his warriors busied themselves with burying the dead. The spiritstones had been sent back to the wave serpents. "Why then were there many?" Fuegan contemplated this riddle. "It must be…perhaps his control is more complete with less biomass to share?" He looked at a gutted warlock by his feet. Her eyes had been clawed out, leaving reddened sockets, forever frozen in a wide-eyed stare. "Perhaps there are secrets we missed."

"My lord?"

"The tyranids. If not for them, Karandras would have survived."

…

[i] Months prior…[/i]

The city was in ruin. Nightmares had finally met their own nightmare. Fear had fled and not even the powers of chaos could stop the hive mind. The sky was filled with spores, clouding out the skull-shaped clouds. The wind could not carry a message of death to those without fear of it. Even the hallucinations of fear occurring to those not utterly corrupted by chaos was null to the invaders. The mindless tyranids were unafraid of that which appeared to them. The hive mind itself neither knew nor cared that the eldar had used it like a tool to eliminate the Night Lord's world for they were immune to its greatest defense: fear. Now, the City of Nightmares had fallen. The rattle of gunfire and shriek of alien monsters filled its every street.

So were the eldar Karandras had taken with him. So was the Phoenix Lord himself.

They strode through the streets of the City of Nightmares, unflinching from the glowing windows that stared down on them from the silhouetted buildings like the eyes of the great bat-daemons they had fought through to get here. Karandras disregarded the voices of death that filled his ears as the wind blew, telling him of the void.

"Ahead, my lord," said one of the eight surviving exarchs. They were the best the aspect shrine could give him: his best students. Each had been personally chosen for this mission by Karandras himself.

The Shadow Roost, wherein lay the mighty raptor lord Baneshadow, had existed on this world even before the Night Lords claimed it. The Imperials told stories of entire classes of Sororitas initiates stolen away by his greedy talons for his personal use. Like a vulture over blood he hung, dozens of raptor cults behind him, flying on his putrid wings over warzones, kidnapping millions of refugees and taking them into the warp to terrorize. His labratories and dungeons below his citadel were too horrifying for any sane scholar to properly record. The eldar had believed him to be an archon of the dark kin the first time he raided Ulthwe. The farseers had seen visions of him carrying away spiritstones by the shipload to feast on their terror. He was a mighty daemon prince indeed. They could not lose him now. Like a hot knife, stabbing at a pair of brawlers, the eldar had to strike him down regardless of loss.

What a sight it was, even to Karandras. It was not visible until he stood right beside it. Suddenly, appearing from the midnight city, rose a huge tower high into the sky, its summit disappearing into the clouds. Many hours would have to be wasted to reach its roof, even by a great ladder. Its windows were shaped like the Night Lords insignia and rings of spikes surrounded it every few layers or so. They were long spikes indeed, like tree trunks. Their purpose, though seemingly a decorative superfluity, was actually more practicle than at first glance. The nearest one was at very least a half kilometer up. From each of the spikes, hanging from clawed feet, were dozens and dozens of…

"I have never seen so many…how can we fight that?" asked one of the exachs, voice trembling. Karandras threw him a disappointed look.

The terror that had shaken even the exarch swept down from the spikes. It seemed that the spikes were exploding, but it was actually the raptors hanging upon them flying off. Dozens, hundreds, thousands even, sweeping together in a thick black fog above the eldar's heads was what they were confronted with. It was like the awakening of a colony of bats at nightfall, except that in place of delicate wings each swooping shape carried a burning jumppack. They swarmed together, not dropping down on the attack, but forming a cloud a vew hundred meters above ground. The shrill cackle of their packs was like a flurry of nocturnal screeches. Only Karandas did not recoil.

"How can we fight it?!" cried one of the exarchs in terror.

"Do not fear," replied Karandras, "they're out of ammunition." Indeed they were: the tyranids had pressed them hard. But this only meant they did not shoot Karandras from his feet. "They do not come. They fear a diversion." He turned confidently to his exarchs. "They [i] fear [/i] a diversion." He looked back up in time to see a hole open in the cloud. Something vast was flying down.

"Here he comes. I knew he would not pass up a chance to fight me."

…

Fuegan was alone. The eldar had retreated, save him. Their mangled comrades could not be buried and though it did him some pain to leave them on this Slaaneshi soil, he took comfort in knowing their spirits were safe. He would not move until he had seen those things who had slain these eldar. His instinct assured him they were coming.

They did not disappoint him. Three emerged from the trees after some waiting. They were what he had envisioned them to be. They looked like space marines, though their brown armor had a disturbing organic feel to its look and seeing it reminded him of a tyranid warrior's crest. Their armor was of an older fashion and upon their pauldrons was the blackened symbol of the Hornet Legion. The similarity ended here. In place of the distinct breathers, their helmets melded into slavering jaws. Their hands ended in talons, though a few carried astartes weapons, or well-made replicas.

"Apollyon," Fuegan said flatly. One of the beasts stepped forward, its mouth gnashing out a perfect, beautiful human voice. It was Apollyon's.

"Eldar, we have come for this world. You cannot stop us," said Apollyon.

"We do not want to stop you," Fuegan replied, "you may have all of Abaddon's daemon worlds, to replenish your lost flesh. We have heard of your plight, Apollyon. When the necrons awoke, they obliterated the enslavers. Now, so little of their collection of flesh remains. The hive mind is fallen to a weak shadow of what it once was. It lost so much flesh that it weakened in potency. Now you can create and control your old legion." All the marines nodded.

"You will join us," they all said in unison as they advanced on him. Bolter rounds crashed against him, but Fuegan's armor held strong.

"Abaddon's daemon worlds are all that stand between you and the Emperor," Fuegan promised without returning a shot. "Break the despoiler here and you may travel to your father without the fear of hindrance from him." Apollyon's marines lowered their guns.

"Do you make me an offer, xenos?" demanded the lost primarch.

"I am telling you what you will do," Fuegan said. "If you wish to see the Imperium kept strong, you will not let Abaddon reach Terra." The slavering marines leered back wickedly upon him while clicking their talons eagerly. Fuegan prepared to fight, sensing the extent of their…of Apollyon's, wild aggression.

"Do you think I fight to save?" laughed Apollyon, "If the Imperium cannot stave off this simple rebellion then it does not deserve to live. And you alien, I will not fight your battles for you, especially when it was your people who awoke those you call the necrons and sent them upon the enslavers. Did you not think I knew about that, alien?"

"Perhaps." Fuegan pointed around him. "This is the power of chaos and it is all that matters. Chaos threatens to consume all. Not even our greatest seers can see how this will end. If you wish to stop it and preserve mankind, then you will destroy these planets." Fuegan was not encouraged when Apollyon laughed, nor was he encouraged when a pair of vicious, scythe-limbed genestealers appeared behind him with the chattering of more behind him.

"If mankind cannot stop chaos then it does not win the right to exist," smiled Apollyon, "is Abaddon not doing exactly what I am?" Then, in a spasm of violence, both genestealers launched themselves forward. Fuegan stepped back, drawing his axe. Moments later, both aliens had fallen apart: hacked to death by his axe.

"You will end up no better than Abaddon," warned Fuegan, "and you will not be rewarded when chaos consumes…"

"Is this all you wish to tell the hive mind?" asked Apollyon.

"There is more. We are bringing your hive fleet here. You will understand soon enough." The Hornet Legion marines stormed forward. Fuegan's mighty gun fired once: melting the first. It fired again: melting another. His axe rose and chopped, their claws lashed forward murderously. But when it was finished, they too lay dead at Fuegan's feet.

He had not killed Apollyon: he'd only shattered a screen that had shown the primarch's face. Turning quickly, Fuegan hurried back to the wave serpents.

…

[i] Months proior…[/i]

It was a giant bat dressed in Night Lord colours, though humanoid and with muscular limbs. Its eyes were like hot coals, its teeth were perfect fangs, and from its rear hung a leathery black tail. It sported a pair of lightning claws of monstrous size. It stood twenty feet tall. Baneshadow was a terrifying sight indeed. Unfortunately, Karandras did not fear him.

"The day has come at last, where you will account for your sins against Ulthwe," Karandras swore. Baneshadow cackled, his voice like a hyena's laugh.

"[b]You cannot live beyond this day, fool, not after coming to me,[/b]" said Baneshadow. "I will drink your soul in my lightless halls." Baneshadow lunged forward and the exarchs fled. Karandras ducked to the side, dodging one lighning claw and catching the other in his vice-like scorpion's claw. In a snap, the daemon prince's weapon broke. When Baneshadow tried to strike Karandras to the side, he found he was gone. Baneshadow coughed as Karandras choked him with one arm and drew his other arm back to strike him with his chainsword. Another swipe hurled Karandras back. The eldar fell back and slammed painfully into the side of the Shadow Roost. Sliding to the ground, he fired into Baneshadow's eyes, blinding him long enough to slide away.

"Where have you gone!" demanded the daemon prince, searching. "I can smell your soul eldar, it smells delicious."

"You're not so frightening when you're confused."

"Shut up!"

"You think you're a warrior," mocked Karandras' voice from the opposite side of the tower, "but you're not!" Baneshadow stormed around the tower, jaws dripping, hungering for blood. He was yet again greeted with nothing when he reached the far side of the tower. He looked up at his raptors, ensuring they were still guarding the tower. "You're overconfident, you're foolish, you're cumbersome. No, you're not a warrior…"

Baneshadow felt a chainsword ender the back of his neck.

"You're a bully, a cowardly thug who haunts the weak. You cannot fight on your own. That is why I do not fear you." Baneshadow shrieked as Karandras, who had pounced on his back, rended the daemon prince asunder. In a storm of blade and claw, the monster was mercilessly slain. Pieces ripped from him burned with black fire. Flames leapt up from his torn skin, not harming the eldar, but slowly and pitilessly consuming the daemon prince. In a final crack of Baneshadow's spine, Karandras cast away the much smaller corpse of the chaos thug. Baneshadow burned until nothing remained: gone in moments.

Karandras looked skyward, knowing what would happen. He could see the raptors of chaos were flying outwards to defend their tower. He'd timed the attack perfectly: the tyranids had come. Retribution against him was not the raptors' priority. Karandras would slip away if only he could break through the tyranids.

The aliens burst out of the shadowed lanes and streets in a circle around the roost. Thousands of them stood in his sight and tens of thousands stood beyond. They were the smaller gaunts, carrying organic rifles or scythed wickedly. Lorded over their flocks of lesser kin were the greater tyranid warriors, their intelligent eyes regarding him hungrily. Lurking from alleyways were the lictors, which had been deployed in vast swarms to combat the skulking defenders. They had the tower surrounded in a wall of flesh. There was no escape for one who could not fly.

'The chaos defenders did not do as well as I had thought,' Karandras thought in some frustration. He brought peace to his mind and activated his chainsword. It put him at peace to at least know that Baneshadow would not escape this fight and never again harm Ulthwe.

"I will not die fighting tyranids," Karandras resolved as the raptors descended. Turning his eyes skywards, Karandras waited for the first diving raptor to come in range. Though most swarmed the tyranids, three came towards him. The first passed straight by Karandras, his legs and body flying towards different places. The second slapped straight into the eldar, barreling both of them towards the boiling melee. Karandras could barely hear the screech of the human beneath his helmet as the air was filled with jets and shrieking tyranids. Somewhere to his right, a tyranid warrior hit the floor. Somewhere to his left, blood was spraying. He slammed into the floor, the raptor still on top of him. Karandras' chainsword was just barely still in his fist.

"Die, DIE!" the raptor cried, raising his blade. Reaching up, Karandras snapped the raptor's arm off at the elbow with his claw. In a swing of the severed arm, Karandras took the raptor's head from his shoulders with his own weapon. He had bounded up to his feet moments later, chainsword on full, looking for the nearest raptor. The melee raged all around him. Excited raptors stood powerfully over the smaller gaunts and almost at equal height that the warriors stood, their chainswords sprawing tyranid innards in all directions with each swing. Regardless, even the hunters of chaos could not slay all these alien beasts. Though tyranid dead swiftly covered the floor, more came, and the raptors began to fall.

Launching himself into them, Karandras cut through two gaunts to reach his next chaos victim. A sweeping swing of his blae clove the man in two. His sword whirled around and parried the strike from the raptor's companion. Both blades howled hungrily into one another, but the eldar's blade proved mightier. Its teeth sawed through the raptor's chainsword, throwing handfuls of sparks into the dark air. Karandras reached forward with his clawed hand and broke the raptor's neck, then swung behind him to slay a tyranid beast rushing up behind him. He could not allow himself to be hit from behind.

But in a melee like this, it was futile. There were no companions to secure his flanks or rear. An army of one: a lone candle of morality in a sea of wickedness.

It was with little surprise that Karandras found himself flanked. To his left stood a fearsome raptor. To his right: a lictor. Whichever way he turned, Karandras would leave his back exposed.

'What is one more corpse to join this?' thought the eldar while, all around him, a savage melee filled the air with screams and the floor with blood. 'I will not die fighting a tyranid.' Karandras turned towards the raptor and rushed it, not caring about the bounding stomps the lictor made as it attacked his exposed back. The raptor tried in vain to hold back Karandras' lashing attacks. He ended his life of depravity with a chainsword in his skull. Karandras, however, could not turn fast enough. First, he felt a hot pain in his back while fleshy hooks whipped around his throat. The lictor's claws did their job thankfully fast.

[i] the hunter of shadows caught by the hunter of shadows [/i]


	36. Deception

Ashmotaria

The world of terror had been mired in an invasion of total attrition with the last hive fleet. Though the tyranids were fighting what could have been their last war, it was still a fact that their whole race was focused in one spot. The chaos defenders could not hope to hold off the seething nightmare, even with the power of chaos.

Now, the eldar had the world lassoed in their power. While their warriors battled and died on the other daemon worlds, their farseers were twisting the warp and harnessing their eldritch magic to do a great task. A storm of warp energy consumed Ashmotaria and spirited it through the depths of space and time, unloading it into real space lightyears away. It appeared from the warp, right over Cherondessorar. A collision was inevitable.

Krieg.

The name, according to some scholars, meant "war" in an ancient Terran language with a name that sounded like "Joy-Men." A more appropriate christening could not have been granted to this world, whose entire history bled it. Another war on the planet was nothing fresh. But of all the wars, all the deaths, all the battles, not one approached the nature of this conflict. The whole planet, formerly desolate, was dotted with the beginnings of sprawling cities, which had been built from the dusty ground upwards by grinning workers. The ground shifted in change to help them dig their foundations. The air grew cloudy when they needed rain and clear when they needed warmth. Unfortunately, to the people of Krieg, their master was Tzeench and their dependence on his poisoned miracles chained them to the god's will. They worked slavishly for him, serving him without question, spurned onwards by promises of a perfect tomorrow. A perfect tomorrow was something the war-ravaged Kriegans desperately wished, but as with so many of their dreams, it was doomed to come tomorrow.

Then the Imperium came. The Kriegans had their dreams surrounded by besieging armies. Construction sites were hurled down into ruin. Roads were blasted, wells were poisoned, and their shrines to their lord of change were wrecked.

"Die for me," Tzeench told his followers. "Sacrifice yourself for others. Your deaths will be the mortar and bricks for a greater tomorrow."

"Die for our lord!" cried the millions of Kriegans. And they stormed forward in living waves against the Imperial lines. Once more, the war-weary Kriegans were plunged into battle.

...

"Cheers!"

The circle of tankards struck together in a massive toast over the circular wooden table. The white froth, with the appearance and shape of sea foam, wobbled like a drunkard from side to side in every tin tankard, sometimes wobbling so much that a certain quantity would trickle down in a wet line of foam.

"Goodbye boys!" read a colourful banner that hung across the streets of the city that basked in to young night while young people celebrated in the square in front of the old library. Twenty-six young men and over three hundred friends reveled around the library, having a tremendous time. Tables by the dozen were set up in the large, empty lot around the library. Barrels and barrels of ale, courtesy of the local brewer's guild sat by the side of the library whose flat walls of cold brown stone were the ideal places to support a stack of barrels.

'I'm gong to miss Dynorak' Anar thought as he took a deep swig from his tankard, not caring if any of the bitter contents dribbled down his chin and onto his vest. He noticed one of his friends nearby, Derander, on his back while facing the sky. His mouth was wide open and his love, a young woman named Cinder, stood on the table. In her hands she had a tankard and was carefully pouring its contents into Derander's mouth. Her friends around her encouraged her. Anar walked up to the table.

"Cinder, don't spill it" one girl laughed.

"Keep talking and you'll make me" Cinder replied.

"Oops!" Anar shouted as he poured the remnants of his tankard into Derander's face. Cinder followed the example and carelessly poured the remains.

"Anar" Cinder asked Anar, her light, fluffy voice abruptly turning heavy and manly.

"What?" Anar asked as the illusion wore off...

…

"ANAR!"

"What?" Anar asked in alarm.

"ANAR GET UP! ARE YOU HIT? ARE YOU HURT"

An explosion shattered the calm, throwing dirt and mud into the air. Anar felt someone lift him up by the back of his flak jacket. He wiped his eyes and swept mud from his skin. He raised his helmeted head over the trench and spat out a mouthful of mud.

"Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," Anar told the sergeant, "funny, when that mortar round hit, I started remembering the day we shipped out is all. A vision, if you would."

"I don't give a frek! Chaos is coming! Can't you damned hear it!?" Anar looked out across no-man's land. Mud, twisted corpses, and broken trees. Those few words was all the description he could give to what he saw. They lay there outside of his trench mixed together in a disgusting cocktail of rancid decay. The lightless sky hung cheerlessly over Krieg while the distant sound of Imperial and chaos gunfire rattled through the air. More explosions shattered the ground, covering no-man's land with a fresh layer of dirt. In the Imperial trenches, men braced themselves, whispering prayers and aiming their lasguns at the explosions. Soon, the Tzeench-twisted Kreigans could counterattack. Their warcry was already rising like a tide.

"For the Emperor," said Anar's sergeant.

"For the Emperor!" echoed the trench, hundreds of voices speaking as one, with that oath sealing their resolve never to retreat. Anar licked his lips and closed his eyes. Inside the privacy of his mind he saw his home again. He would die to save it. His eyes opened.

The Kriegans emerged from the hanging dust left by the artillety shells. They wore long coats with dehumanizing masks. In their eyes, a light blue fire gleamed. These worthless shells of men lived for the promies from a fickle and uncaring god. Not Anar. It was what made the guardsmen better than these dregs.

That and the other thing.

As Imperial lasguns cut into the Kriegans, the true extent of corruption revealed itself. Dying Kriegans burst apart to show the uniforms were empty. Dust leaked out of holes punched in their uniforms and bones clattered out when heavy bolter shots cut them apart. These men, given heart and soul to Tzeench, were no longer men but living ghosts trapped within their uniforms. Down they went, in sprays of grey dust. Heads came from shoulders with pinpoint shots from bolter rounds. Anar noticed that the blue light coming from the eyeholes in their masks persisted for a few moments after the death of the ghost inside the uniform before the light finally went out. The Kriegans retuned a few shots, which bounced and bounded through the Imperial trenches. To Anar's left, the sergeant died. To his right, another man fell.

'Home, home, home,' Anar thought, his face sweating, his grimy hands clasping his lasgun and shooting fiercely into the living wave. More Kriegan ghosts crumbled to dust, blunting their charge. With a last sweep of bolterfire, the Kriegans fell back, leaving behind a carpet of empty uniforms and bleached bones.

A cheer arose from the Imperial trench, short and grim: the best these war-weary men could handle.

However, the victory was too quick. As the sound of thunder filled the stormless sky, a few men looked upwards just in time to see several large capsules descend: dark blue with gold trim. The Thousand Sons.

[i] It was another vision. All of it had been. [/i]

"It's them!" Anar cried from behind his masked face. "Kill the Thousand Sons!" His gloved hands raised his lasrifle to the drop pods as they violated the Kriegan trenches. Though Anar's flesh had long since rotted away, his bones carried his uniform's weight with the warp's help. The sockets that had once held his brown eyes stared intensely at the Space Wolves.

"I die for my home," whispered Anar's skeletal head, "I die for tomorrow!" Around him, his fellow Kriegans hurried, their masked faces could not show fear, neither could their fleshless heads.

And outside the trench, a carpet of bloody Imperial guardsmen lay.

…

Odeen howled as he materialized outside the trench, eager to support his brothers. From their drop pods, the Space Wolves rushed out into the Kriegans, chainswords whirling, armor turning away lasblasts, pistols blowing Kriegans into powder. He saw a chainsword go through a Kriegan. It always puzzled him to see one of these skeletal men die. How could something so fragile even stand? He raised his axe and rushed into the trenches while more Space Wolves teleported in. The nearest Kriegan was too late to bring his lasgun to bear on Odeen. The axe carved straight through his left arm, releasing a short spray of dust from the stump. Odeen hurled himself further into the trenches, to more enemies of the Imperium.

…

Anar cried, his remaining hand trying to stem the flow of blood coming from his severed arm. He could see the dead faces of his friends looking at him: victims of the Thousand Sons. Biting his lip, Anar squeezed his eyes closed and thought of home and how he would get back. His wife and their twin children. But how his arm hurt! All he could do was open his mouth and, from the depths of his lungs, let out a shriek of mortal pain. A second Thousand Son entered the trenches. Anar fumbled for his lasgun but could not get it. The Thousnd Son noticed him, wicked eyes staring from beneath a gold-crested head.

That was it, he would die. Little Mhaldin and Fenera would grow up without a father. But it would do them proud to know that their daddy had died for a better tomorrow.

"For the Emperor!" Anar yelled, his unmasked face bent in defiance as the Thousand Son raised his boot.

…

Odeen turned around fast enough to see Frekka stomp on a fallen Kriegan's skull. The foot fell, crushing the mask and the fleshless skull that lay within. He pointed his bolter brutally chopped down two of the surviving Kriegans with bolterfire. The whine of chainswords abated one by one as the Kriegans were eradicated. Odeen sighed and wiped dust from his axe. So far, no Thousand Sons had been seen anywhere.

"Well, there it is," said Odeen to himself as he stared out across the field to the great looming shape in the distance. His Astartes eyes could clearly make out the ring of squatting fortresses surrounding the shape and he had no doubts that each was manned by hundreds of Tzeench-corrupted Kreigans and other horrors of the warp. The shape itsef was a tower of epic scale. It was crested by a statue of a two-headed vulture that was posed like the Imperial eagle. This tower was what funneled the warp-energies into Krieg, keeping it in real space. This tower was the only objective that meant anything. Other Space wolves looked in its direction and judged how many kilometers it was. Odeen stepped calmly though the trenches, searching for fallen Space Wolves.

"For the Emperor…" Odeen looked down in the voice's direction and flinched in surprise. One of the fallen Kriegans had not died. He had been cloven in two surely enough, but the torso was intact as was the skull. Something had torn the man's mask off, showing a naked skull upon a spinal column. Odeen had seen many things, but nothing like the sight of a fleshless skull's jaw move and a living man's voice echo forth from it.

"Chaos will never prevail," the skull gasped as if in pain. Odeen flinched when the skull looked at him. "Abaddon will lose. Tomorrow will be bright."

"No," Odeen replied, "this is the final battle. This is part of Ragnarok. The future will not be bright." Then he stomped the skull into shards.

…

Again, Apollyon stared at a planet from afar as the hive mind had done with so many other planets. He could feel the hive mind considering that peacock of a world above him in the sky with its ususal murderous hunger, the hunger that had damned so many countless millions of trillions of creatures to the fate of being distilled down into a genetic soup to be used as the building blocks for the unspeakable creatures that peopled the enslaver swarm. To Apollyon, the enslavers could not have been named more appropriately.

He stared at the planet through different eyes of different fleshy incarnations of the Hornet Legion that stood across the strange darkness world. And from the surface of the world that he watched, he also had incarnations of the Hornet Legion, whose eyes he also used. Both parties of him could see how the two worlds would collide. There was no stopping the approach. These worlds had scant minutes left apart as their respective gravities began their work.

None of Apollyon's Hornet Legion flinched as the two worlds collided. Two mundane worlds would have wrecked one another. These planets mashed into each other and stuck, like what one would expect if two balls of clay struck the other. Apollyon felt every enslaver creature fall over under the force of the force of the ensuing earthquake. And then it was still: the daemon worlds were now one. One simply hung off the other like a parasite.

Inside his mind, Apollyon saw the last hive ships of the last hive fleet raise their attention to the other world. As they drifted towards it, their senses detected the heat of interstellar engines. Within seconds, the hive fleet had spotted a vast Imperial fleet over the other world.

'What are the eldar trying to do?' wondered Apollyon while an ocean of enslaver creatures flooded towards the place where the two daemon worlds connected.

Before long, it was total war. Across the two daemon worlds, now attached like conjoined twins, it was total war. On the ground, tyranid beasts fought a grinding battle of attrition with the forces of chaos. The eldar, however, were nowhere to be found. Apollayre knew, as surely as was possible, that they had retreated.


	37. The Primarch's Warning

It was nighttime. Underneath the burning stars alight upon the Holy Terran sky lay the ruins of an ancient temple upon one of the few patches of clear ground upon the whole planet. This temple and its plateau was sacred, for it dated back to the time of the Great Crusade. A simple lightless hallway, its roof long collapsed, its columns bone white against the calm night sky. There were twenty pedastals but only nine were occupied by nine tall statues as lifelike as the day they were carved.

The primarchs. They were his only company as he moved through the simple, cross-shaped temple, his giant feet landing softly on the dirty flagstones underfoot. Dressed over his bright yellow power armor was a blood red cape. Upon his shoulder was the insignia of the Lamenters chapter.

Spectros of the Lamenters was meditating, though not in a way that many would call meditation. Like a golden ghost he moved through this lightless temple and thought of greater days: splendid, heroic, lost forever. His helmet lay in the middle of the temple, where the arms of the cross met. His bare lips recited a simple lament, which he had memorized centuries before.

"Nothing farther then he uttered, not a feather then he fluttered, till I scarcely more than muttered 'Other friends have flown before'," Spectros stopped his melancholic recital to pause at the base of the statue of Sanguinius, who the Lamenters called their primarch. His youthful face smiled down, unassuming of the villainy that the statue opposite him would commit. Not even Spectros knew which statue it had been that had occupied the pedastal opposite Sanguinius. Even the name had been scratched away. Spectros briefly wondered if it had been Horus' image that had once faced this statue, before continuing onwards with both his meditation and his lament.

"On the morrow he will leave me just as my hopes have flown before," Spectros whispered to nobody. "Then the bird said…"

"[b]Nevermore[/b]"

His shock came not only from being interrupted but also by the voice itself. Deep, smooth, and almost commanding: a voice worthy of the primarchs themselves. But as Spectros scanned the air around him, searching its vacant emptiness for the giant or the Astartes who had spoken the word, which also happened to be the next word in his lament, he saw nothing but the faces of the three statues he stood near.

"Who was that?" Spectros asked calmly, "there is no need to skulk." His eyes then fell upon the only other living being that could have made the noise. It was a black bird, brazenly standing atop one of the statues, glaring down at him like it was an eagle and he was a rabbit. Its bright yellow eyes looked right through him as a humored smile broke his face.

"So, my lament has come into reality," Spectros muttered. He lost interest when the bird quit its perch and flew off into the night. Spectors paced about the temple, continuing his lament.

"Doubtless' said I 'What it mutters is only stock and store. Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster…'

"[b]Nevermore[/b]" spoke the voice once more. Spectors broke his meditation again to find the voice's source. The bird had returned, perched again upon the same statue. Spectros stood, transfixed under its gaze.

"Are you a prophet?" asked Spectros suddenly, "your words...what do they mean? Am I to follow you? Are you the Emperor's will? An omen?" Spectros had many questions to ask it. His answer was a nudge of the beak. The bird was either rubbing its nose against its left wing or it was pointing left. When it took off and flew left, Spectros followed it. Across the darkness he ran, across the rough landscape of this patch of empty ground. The black bird was visible in the air, flying slow enough to allow the Astartes to remain close.

The bird was leading him somewhere

…

[i]Here lies Usorckai and Usormaelach. Man and wife, true blooded of the Usor[/i]

Usoran's forgotten parents never had gotten a burial. When the Jara sacked their village, they left no one except Usoran himself who cared enough about the Usor to bury them. It brought Brother Usoran of the Dark Angels no feeling to see the gloomy headstone. But young Usoran Tabbercs of the Usor broke down and sobbed over it, hugging the cold stone as affectionately as he could if he were hugging his mother's waist. He pressed his face into the engraved words and let his tears trickle down the smooth stone. He slumped to his knees and cried into the ground that held his parents' bones. Around him, for as far as the eye could see, a city of headstones stood in rows upon rows across the sterile ground of this endless cemetery.

"[i]Do not cry my son,[/i[" said the soothing voice of Lion, suddenly standing over Usoran like a human eclipse. He bent down and seated himself beside the boy, though he did not touch him. He waited patiently alongside Usoran Tabbercs for a long time, as patient as a waiting lion. Usoran sat up at last, wiping his eyes, and looking at Lion with a tearstained face.

"Why?" asked Usoran. "Why did this have to happen? Why did those evil Jara men take it so far? It's not fair."

[i]It is the way the universe works, the price every beginning has," replied Lion. "I do not speak of Nurgle's philosophy. Nurgle would deny everything its existence between its blossoming and withering, a perversion of the natural order. I speak of the true natural order, of the laws of life and death.[/i]

"Who's Nurgle?" Usoran sniffled.

"[i]Ah, the innocence of a child,[/i]" sighed Lion.

"But…why? Why? I loved m…mother…father t…t…too…why?"

[i]Not everything has a definite meaning. This is something that some people go their whole lives without learning. The universe is harsh and life can be difficult at times, but you must find the strength to carry on,[/i] replied Lion. That didn't bring the orphan boy any comfort and he flopped back down and continued sobbing. The Lion continued to speak and though Usoran's crying was noisy he heard every word with crystal clarity.

"[i]Usoran, the Imperium is like a sickly old man lying upon his deathbed. His life is leaving him and soon he will be in his grave, under a headstone. It is the nature of things, the law of life and death. The Imperium was born and it has lived. Now it will complete its life of thirteen thousand years. But take heed, for forces that are not the work of nature threaten the very universe. Chaos has no place in the natural order and it even now closes in around the Imperium to claim it and fill the Materium with unending suffering.[/i]" Young Usoran didn't understand. "[i]You must find the strength to defeat it. You may not save the Imperium but you will save the universe.[/i]"

"I don't want to fight!" Usoran shrieked, "I don't want to fight your battles! I want my mother, I want my father! Go away! Go away!" He stood up to challenge Lion, but found the man had disappeared. In his place stood a single headstone, standing beneath a statue of an angel. Upon its surface was a double-headed eagle: the name of the person intered beneath it.

"[i]Next to the power of chaos, you are only a child. You cannot overcome chaos itself, it is as much a part of you as your body. Only with the death of the Imperium will it be gone forever. To defeat it, you need only deny chaos its prize.[/i["

"Holy Terra," said Usoran of the Dark Angels. He looked around the empty cemetery. He looked down at his parents' headstone, which seemed so small beneath his astartes build. He winced, thinking about how he'd behaved towards it moments ago. He resolved not to tell any of his battle brothers about how the primarch made him cry, even if it was a dream. "No, primarch you are wrong. I do not need to bury the Imperium to destroy chaos. I can slay its champions, push its taint back to the Eye of Terror and purge the unclean. The Imperium has ruled the stars for over ten thousand years. We can beat the dark powers. When chaos gives all its strength to attack Terra, we can destroy it. But not even that will come to pass: for we chall defeat it here, upon the despoiler's daemon worlds."

"[i]That is the very reason why I have called you to me my son. The despoiler is not headed for Holy Terra,[/i]" replied Lion El'Jonson's voice.

…

Odeen regarded the distant tower with all the disdain that his chapter was famous for. It stood brazenly out like a spire to evil even under the punishing horizontal rain that the basalisks were throwing in its direction. Every shot they took exploded against an invisible shield, generated by some chaotic magic. Thus, the tower stood where it was behind a moat of fire while the vulture-thing stood atop it mocking the invaders.

The siege was barely underway and already Odeen was concerned. The tower's shields seemed invulnerable. An evil force no doubt gave them their power. Already, three sanctioned psykers amongst the guardsmen had been possessed by the tower's taint. When around it, men fell asleep and never woke up while others claimed to hear voices coming from the tower's direction. All these complaints and the rumors they sparked had to be surpressed by the shout of a commissar (or his pistol in a few cases).

"Brother Odeen?" Jdell asked. From his positon atop the earthworks that were part of the trench network the Imperial Guard had occupied, Odeen looked down at the younger Space Wolf. His yellow-blonde hair still looked glossy and civilized, not like the rough powdered colour of Odeen's own hair. Jdell would have to harden up or risk being culled from the pack.

"What?" Odeen replied over the roar of the artillery batteries that lay further down the line.

"You are summoned…sir," Jdell answered. Odeen mouthed the word "sir." Jdell still had to shake off the customs of the Imperial Guard. "Immediately."

"Who is it that summons a Space Wolf without any…" Odeen scoffed and shook his head. "This damned situation cannot get worse. Who is it?"

"A Dark Angel captain. He asked for you by name, sir."

"By Russ' teeth, it IS worse," Odeen stomped his foot in rage. "Why would one of those Dark Angel defeatists beg for me?" Odeen suddenly grew suspicious. "A captain?" Odeen followed Jdell back to the command outpost. He passed by a fresh daemonic accident on the way: a stretcher covered with bloody meat and pieces of a flak jacket. A priest was already burning it.

Odeen was led to a Dark Angel's thunderhawk which bore all the markings of the one that had saved him from the Alpha Legion. His suspicions were confirmed at last when he entered it to find a familiar face inside the primary troop compartment. Usoran looked grim, even for a Dark Angel. He was whispering a prayer under his breath as Odeen approached him with Jdell. Odeen looked around the empty thunderhawk and then back at Usoran, who politely dismissed Jdell. The lesser marine saluted like a guardsman and left the two alone.

"Jdell," Odeen replied flatly, "nevermind him…"

"I need your help Odeen, I need your help convincing your chapter to come with me. Some of my chapter listened to me and will accompany me for the journey. I need your help now. I think the Space Wolves are the only ones who believe strongly enough in the primarchs to accept what I have learned from my visions," Usoran said. Odeen narrowed his eyes. He was speaking as fast as he could.

"Are you asking for my help?" Odeen asked.

"I saved your life. By rights, you owe me a favor," replied Usoran.

"Why should I help you? Why should the Space Wolves help you? We're busy with Krieg," Odeen snorted. "Go bother the Imperial Fists."

"I had another vision," Usoran said quickly, "the primarch, my primarch, came to me. He told me Abaddon wasn't headed for Holy Terra." Odeen rolled his eyes. This was thick, even for a Dark Angel.

"Of course he's not, he's hiding somewhere on one of these…"

"He told me Abaddon was already there. The final battle has already begun."

…

Over the surfaces of the twin worlds of chaos, conjoined as they were by their continental skins, the Imperial fleet dueled valiantly against the cloud of tyranid hiveships streaming up from the surface. They were like gnats, like locusts, like every category of swarming insect as the hiveships issued up towards the walls and formations of Imperial ships. Countless fell down like a fel rain onto the world below, bodies riddled with ordnance, but the seething teeming flocks of droneships glided ever onwards. From ship to ship, Imperial officers yelled orders to one another and summoned for aid. With a grim inevitability, the tyranid legions swarmed forth.

"SIR, DECK IS BREACH…"

"TARGET DESTROYED. NEXT ONE. NEXT ONE. WHERE THE HELL IS MY LANCE BATTERY?"

"IT'S COMING AT US"

"SIR FRESH WAVE OF DRONESHIPS RISING FROM THE SURFACE. WHAT? HOW CAN THEY POSSIBLY HAVE MORE?"

Asurmen sighed as he listened to the terrified human voices that his scry-crystal picked up. They came in, ever more fearful, as the tyranid swarm tore into their blockade. In the _Hand of Asuryan, _he felt safe. But the tyranids could not be afforded a single victory to swell their strength. The eldar had to intervene. The tyranids had done their job. Now their time had come to die, once and for all. Too many ships had been withdrawn from the chaos worlds to fight. One hundred ships, so Asurmen had heard. It weighted heavily on his heart to know that the crew of these ships represented one tenth of the last living eldar. The past few months had taken their gruesome toll.

From the cannon across the _Hand of Asuryan, _stars swept in towards the droneships of the hivefleet. Alien organisms turned to brown mist, splitting painfully apart and showering others with shards of bone the size of asteroids. Many of the aliens were shot in two, spilling greenish acid into the vaccume. Each passing heartbeat added more kills to the eldar ship's tally. Hovering over the conflict, the eldar were death given a deceptively beautiful form, like a viper. How, then, did they still have the numbers to keep coming?

'We cannot turn from this path,' Asurmen thought. He prepared to give the order for his ship to withdraw once the rest of the fleet arrived.

"Help us…help…" Asurmen shifted in disbelief and leaned into his scry-crystal. "Fuegan?" he asked.

"It is I," Fuegan's voice said from the crystal's vibrating depths. "The tyranids have ambushed my fleet. Our ground positions are overwhelmed. I must escape." There was no time. Asurmen would have to give the order to disengage and lock onto Fuegan's position. There was no time to lose. Like his own ship, Fuegan's flagship also carried a small webway portal.

…

The run was long and when Spectros saw where the creature led him, his eyes widened and he retreated back the way he came.

It had been a shallow valley, unremarkable but for the drop pods that had landed in it. They bore the mark of chaos. When he took a second look, he saw no sign of the friendly bird. It had either flown away or vanished. He was back at the temple moments later. Taking his helmet, he threw it on.

"Lamenters," Spectros said into the vox-bead in his helmet, "we are undone! Heretics have violated the sanctity of Holy Terra! To arms!" The vox network immediately sprang to life with the voices of other battle brothers, responding to his warning. Spectros moved to leave the temple, but paused and afforded a single glance back at the statues. He paused before the one the black bird had perched upon. Spectros bended his knee in thanks. It was the statue of Corax of the Raven Guard, whose last words had been the very words the bird had spoken.

"The Emperor's blessings to you, Corax," Spectros said. In the statue's stone hands was cupped a stone raven


	38. The Attack on Terra Begins

Apollyon could sense that the Imperials and eldar were fighting as a coalition against the enslavers. He could sense the hivemind screech and wither like a dry plant while its flesh was burned from reality. The collection grew ever smaller and the ancient minds of the enslavers grew more and more compressed. Everywhere, he could sense death. The beautiful, perfect contructs the enslavers had perfected were being smashed by the humans. Though it was far off yet, Apollyon knew the hive mind's final demise was imminent. Best he drag as many eldar into their graves as he could.

Skittering and screeching, another flock of hormagaunts scampered past him, leaping over dead eldar warriors that lined the chewed-up corridore of this large eldar ship, docked passively over the surface of the chaos world. The bridge yet stood, at the end of the hallway beyond the heavy door like an unclaimed trophy. It took Apollyon a minute to cross the length of the hallway, such was its length. His chitin feet crossed by waiting enslaver creatures that stood silently by and waited. As the hunter broods cleared out the last eldar defenders, Apollyon channeled his psyker talent.

The door wheeled open, coaxed apart by his mind.

He was immediately met with a storm of hot plasma. His body exploded painlessly. Forcing himself into a tall enslaver warrior, Apollyon took form once again and stood to the side as the beasts swarmed the bridge, slashing out upon the sparse eldar defenders that stood inside the rounded chamber. Their screams were child-like to Apollyon's ears. He entered soon after, in time to see the final armed defender fall to a bony scythe. It was the unarmed defenders that stopped him.

In the middle of the bridge was a raised platform, surrounded by a solid wall of blue energy. The remains of the twenty eldar warriors lay around it, outside the energy. Atop the platform were three eldar. One he knew as Fuegan, who had laid down his arms to fiddle with an incomprehensible alien tool. The others were robed, meek looking eldar who tended to a white arch, a doorway, big enough for three men to walk beneath side by side. As Apollyon watched, a nimbus of hazy purple matter burst into being underneath the doorway's arch. Fear in their eyes, the meek ones fled. Apollyon felt the hive mind direct a termagaunt into the field. The enslavers judged the field unbreakable when the termagaunt did not pass through based on how it felt.

"A webway gate," muttered Apollyon.

"Apollyon!" Fuegan shouted. His hot voice was muffled almost to silence by his shield. Apollyon had to stride to the front of the swarm and press his unnatural face against the shield. "Terra is under attack!"

"Why should I be concerned?" asked Apollyon, "enslavers or chaos, it doesn't matter which the Emperor must fight. If humanity cannot keep her gates standing, she does not deserve to live."

"You know nothing of chaos Apollyon, you don't know what you're aiding. Turn away from the Imperials and attack the worlds my race has brought you to," Fuegan pleaded.

"I witnessed Horus' heresy from a distance," Apollyon replied. "I know chaos and you do not. I know how it feeds off the emotions of mortals, I know how the enslavers feed, I know how chaos recoils as we descend. If, alien, you had let my plague drift across the stars and purge the galaxy of almost all life, chaos would have died. Chaos would have died and the strongest of mankind would have been spared. Mankind would have rebuilt from there, stronger than ever. Instead…" Apollyon spat ichtor against the shield. "Instead you mauled us with the necron legions and mutilated the hivemind. You think we would have destroyed chaos' enemy? No, chaos IS the Imperium. Your race's meddling has helped chaos like nothing else." For a satisfying moment, the alien kept his arrogant lips closed.

"Apollyon…" Fuegan began, "Apollyon, if you are no friend of chaos then why don't you help us defeat Abaddon? He wants to conquer the Imperial palace and use Terra's light to project the power of chaos across the galaxy…"

"I will not hear your lying," Apollyon interrupted. "But as for your question: I despise chaos. But I loath the weak even more. Destroy the weak, destroy chaos." With a surge of his power, Apollyon touched the shield. It flickered.

Fuegan disappeared into the portal once the blue of the shield had gone. Apollyon raced after him, pursued by the enslaver host. Only moments after Apollyon vanished did the _Hand of Asuryan _arrive to deliver Fuegan's ship. The space going organisms attached to it like parasites were shot away from its sweeping hull by eldar torpedos. The living spore sacs growing amongst its mull-mounted batteries were burnt apart by plasma. The _Hand of Asuryan _drifted over its rescued sister while scanners swept across its innards. Nothing living remained. They had all followed Fuegan to wherever he went.

It was only then when the _Hand of Asuryan _received news from the seer council on Ulthwe. Abaddon had reached Holy Terra.

…

Cadia: hotly contested. Imperial armies tore through its shanty towns and wilderness, battling a highly professional mutant horde.

Catachan: Mired in death, consuming regiment after regiment of Imperial Guard. It was a living nightmare for the soldiers sent to fight there. The limitless numbers of Imperial Guard pounded the world with their bodies but it kept devouring them.

Necromunda: The endless siege. Like Catachan, it was a quagmire of death. The Imperials were always at a disadvantage fighting up a mountain against a well entrenched foe. Human blood flowed into oceans and thousands died every hour.

Dis: A blistering campaign of rolling armor across blazing dunes. Dozens of dead-ended stalemates raged on in blood-soaked cities of black cathedrals. It was a prolonged sacrifice of men to the daemons who lived there.

Ashmoraria: Depopulated but swarming with tyranids, threatening to bring the hive perilously close to Terra. It would be up to the Imperial Navy to keep the hive penned up upon the world.

Cherondesorar: No news had come out from the world in quite some time. All indicators pointed blatantly to a cataclysmic disaster for the invaders.

Krieg: A grinding duel of attrition with the dead. It was terrible indeed to fight men whose warcry matched yours. Upon Krieg, winning the war fell to outnumbering the enemy and there was no shortage of heretics to fall against the invasion.

And none of it mattered. Absolutely none of it mattered. All the millions had died for nothing, looking for someone who had left the planets months ago. This historical failure was so large that Odeen cringed to even think that, for all these bloody months, he'd been fighting uselessly against worthless traitors while Abaddon had driven like a spear towards the Emperor's heart. He could not pray for forgiveness or sacrifice enough lambs to atone for this miserable error.

The message had been sent around the invasion fleets. Anyone who would believe it would make for Terra as fast as they could. Odeen was proud that the whole Space Wolves chapter had obeyed, even if the order had stemmed from a Dark Angel. Odeen proudly reminded himself of how few Dark Angels had listened to Usoran: only those the captain commanded.

And so the Space Wolves entered the Warp alongside a single Dark Angel ship. Emperor willing, others would follow.

…

A lifetime would be spent summing up all the wars of the galaxy inside a thousand year span of its thirteen-thousand years. A lifetime listening to the droning voice of some tireless scholar tell of the rise and fall of warlords and rebellions, aliens and empires. All the while, the Imperium was present. For the first nine lifetimes, one would hear of wars endless and incoherent, unrelated to one another. Then, at the tenth, they would hear of battles with the tyranids and the necrons and the tau. For the next three lifetimes, they would listen to progressive wars that dragged the galaxy closer to oblivion inside the belly of the warp. They would hear of chaos' mounting victories that pale even the destruction the hive fleets could give. As the person lay on their deathbed at the end of the thirteenth lifetime of listening to wars, they would hear of the extinction of the orks and the tau and the necrons, but the unstoppable rise of chaos. As they died, a fel voice would whisper into their ears news of the final war and how Abaddon struck Holy Terra at last. Death would be greeted with his name fresh in the rotting mind.

The Final Battle began

Upon Holy Terra, alarms went off. Ancient devices, not used in thousands of years to warn the populace of invasion, left their centuries of sloth and blared a terrible warning to the billions of people upon Terra. The sound was the wail of a dying crow mixed with the shrill shrek of a woman in pain and it reached all corners of Terra. The resulting panic amongst the population accounted for more deaths than a small war. Thousands were killed in stampedes and thousands more commited ritual suicide while still others were shocked to death by the abrupt and terrifying arrival of the alarm's blare. Before the first half hour of the alarm's warning was up, an armada of Imperial Navy ships was dispatched to greet the invaders, who were now cresting over the blackened remains of Mars and heading on their warpath towards Holy Terra.

The admiral of the fleet sent to greet the attackers was met with two sights that nearly stopped his old heart. The first was the sight of _Planetkiller. _It sat in the center of the enemy fleet. The admiral shook his head in disbelief and looked again. There it was, straight out of his nightmares and historical studies, the one ship he assumed he would never see. Even when scanners confirmed the sighting he was still in denial. Nothing so terrible could be allowed to happen.

The second sight was the warp rift blossoming behind the enemy fleet, making the handful of ships all the more terrible. The void bled red fire out into space. Reality was wounded, the admiral had no better analogy for the growing warp rift he saw. He looked across his armada of sixty ships and straightened his back in some confidence. They had the enemy outnumbered and they were the fleet of Terra. Surely…

The rift expanded explosively, turning from a bleeding wound to a crimson nova, engulfing the chaos ships. The admiral didn't have time to contemplate the possibility that the enemy had been destroyed: even the lowest rating in the armada could tell the nova would also consume them. Frantic orders to evade were given but not carried out in time. Like china in a hurricane, the mightiest ships of Holy Terra were dashed apart by the explosion. In a heartbeat, the fleet was gone, consumed by the powers of chaos. Only ash remained of them.

The massacre of their fleet in this destructive nova was not a phyrric victory for the Imperium. The nova disippated as cleanly as a ball of leaping fire to show the military observers the most damning sight they could have imagined. The chaos fleet remained intact, completely unscathed by the warp's might. No doubt they carried the foul blessings of the Dark Gods. But not even that was what the observers witnessed. Mars had gone, sucked up by the warp. Vomited out in her place was a world of unbroken darkness. If not for the stars, it would be invisible against the void. The defenders of Terra prayed desperately when they realized that where Mars had once been there was now the eighth planet of Abaddon's invasion: the world of the Black Legion. Scanners couldn't even identify what planet it might have once been if indeed it had ever been mortal.

…

"Well done, despoiler," Perturabo said Abaddon. The Despoiler turned his head to the primarch, a daemonic grin of rage painted onto his inhuman face. Alone on the bridge of the _Planetkiller _with the primarchs, Abaddon was free to flaunt their success.

"Am I not greater than the warmaster?" Abaddon asked, "not even he could do what I have done."

"It is because the powers of chaos are greater now than they were when we first did this!" shouted Angron from Abaddon's right. "I do not agree with your cowardly plan! Blood for the blood god! We must attack!"

"Intrigue is a virtue. It is better to be a coward and win than to feed Khorne and lose," replied Perturabo. "My warsmiths are already reporting back. The powers of chaos and their warp-smithery have neutered Luna and many of Holy Terra's anti-orbital batteries."

"Your insufferable trickery is costing the blood god his prize! There is no honour in this!" bellowed Angron.

"Patience brother, Terra's defenses are too formidable for our small fleet. If we are to reach Camlan, they must be removed."

"Our faithful are prepared no matter what. The millions are awaiting your orders," Lorgar added to Abaddon, "when shall the lesser faithful land?" Abaddon looked back to Terra, pleased at the power he held over the primarchs.

"We send in the millions first. They will keep the locals busy," Abaddon said. If the crazed legions upon his daemon world did not suffice to choke the defenders into a quagmire, the daemons they unleashed surely would. "Perturabo, your siege guns?"

"Ready to serve chaos, to the last gear," the iron-voiced daemon prince replied. All eyes turned to Abaddon, burning in anger, eager.

"Then…" Abaddon pointed to Terra with the Talon of Horus, "ATTACK!" The daemon primarchs shrieked in approval. As they teleported back to their respective ships, the window grew full of ships of the heretical fleets from Abaddon's world. Frigates and transports, choked with the best of Abaddon's faithful. These petty humans would sell their lives against the Emperor's world to ensure chaos ultimate victory. Abaddon could feel the air around him shift in anticipation. Chaos was with him today. Death to the False Emperor.

…

The crews on Luna witnessed the heretical ships approach ahead of the new daemon world. Lance batteries readied and missiles were aimed. Enough firepower to destroy a planet.

The order was given to fire and the order should have been all that was needed to rid the heavens of these invaders. Unforunately, it was not to be. The crews discovered to their horror that the controls were unresponsive. Moments later, evil runes of chaos were woven across their controls as if by an invisible hand. Commanders recoiled in fear as symbols of Tzeench warped their way across their screens. Moments later, the weapons all overloaded. Across Luna, missiles exploded in their silos. Laser powerplants overheated and vanished in spectacular fireballs. Luna was covered in fire as everyone on it turned to dust. Then, it was gone, sterile. Luna's defenses were completely wiped out. Again, the sorceries of chaos had swept Terra's defenses away. Across Terra, the same fate awaited the anti-orbital batteries there. Fireballs leapt up and entire hives collapsed under the shockwaves, crushing billions of unsuspecting citizens, betrayed by their own protectors. It was not even an hour into the siege of Terra and chaos had billions of deaths in its greedy belly. In the darkest corners of Terra, Iron Warrior infiltrators cackled in victory.

As destructive as those calamities had been, the loss of a few billion was still a small wound to Terra. Though she burned in many places, she was unscathed in most others. The PDF of Holy Terra made themselves ready as the enemy approached.

The first landing craft broke through the Terran clouds and the first flak batteries opened fire. Within seconds, a burning artifical comet fell from the sky. Chaos had suffered its first casualties.

…

The thud of falling shells was distant. Thraknos had the shields under his stead to thank for that. The tech priest furiously whispered prayers of thanks to the shield generators as he walked through the machine temple, blessing every generator individually. Given the length of the chamber, it would take him a few minutes to walk beneath the vaulted ceilings to bless all these ancient generators. This monumental temple was one of a kind. Thraknos was lucky to work there, even in these days, even with chaos descending on Terra. These generators were what maintained the void shields over the district where the Emperor's palace lay. To work here even as one of Thraknos' ten guards was an honor greater than that of planetary governor, even if they were skitari. With the heart of hive city around him, there was no way into these blessed halls. Except…

Without warning, a warp rift exploded into being in the far left corner of the chamber. It was small and constantly shrinking and expanding. The Emperor's will was closing it even as it was born. But there was no time to pray, for it was still a rift. When it at last collapsed, Thraknos and his guards did not celebrate, for it had remained to squeeze three gray armored heretics into this sacred place. Their helmets were like skulls, their guns were striped yellow and black. Two carried bolters and the helmetless third carried a tall maul. His naked head was covered in metal studs that crossed his light brown skin like a grid. Even from this distance, Thraknos recognized a warsmith of the Iron Warriors!

"Kill him!" Thraknos shouted to his Skitari bodyguards. He dove behind a pillar in time to dodge a storm of bolterfire. Thraknos buried his face into the ground and waited, eyes closed. When the shooting stopped, he raised his head and checked the enemy. The warsmith was stroking one of the generators with his gloved hands. The powers of chaos were not strong so close to the Emperor, thus the Iron Warrior could not do what his kinsmen had no doubt done to Terra's defenses. The two other Iron Warriors also still lived, scanning the chamber for more victims. Thraknos knew without seeing that the skitari were dead. He could only helplessly watch as the warsmith raised his hammer to smash a generator.

"NO!" cried Thraknos in despair. Both of the helmeted Iron Warriors snapped their heads in his direction. They both raised their bolters and fired. The first fired at Thraknos. Explosive bolts blew chunks out of the column he hid behind. The second fired into the first.

Thraknos blinked in astonishment as one heretic killed the other. Under a spray of bolterfire, the traitor died, landing in a heap on the floor. The warsmith turned his head around to face his other comrade, surprise bending his evil face into a look that Thraknos could only call fear. Smoothly the traitor's traitor swung his bolter around to his companion and he sent the remainder of his magazine into the warsmith. In a spray of blood and armor, the warsmith died, those precisely laid studs across his head shooting through the air, his skull coming apart. The survivor retreated, disappearing into the shadows.


	39. The Primarchs are Returning

The whole hive was on fire. The smoke blotted out the sun. Everything was gravestone gray, scorched charcoal black in some places and all tinged by a warm orange glow of the hellish fires around them. With an impenetrable black cloud overhead and the colour of brimstone cast flickering across the rubble-strewn killing field, Spectros felt like he had entered hell. The screams of the dying came from far off through the wrecked layers of hive cities. Mountains of powdered rockrete lay in imposing mountains beneath gutted spires. Bodies lay across the platform in a sporadic layer, most of which were leftovers from the previous day's fighting.

They had come every day for the past three days. Each time, there were millions. They came in a storm of falling shells and mayhem, killing and burning their way across Terra. Each time, the PDF rose up to fend them off and each day they were victorious. For three days the heretics had come only to run straight into a wall of determined defenders who cut them down by the million. Each day they were pushed back but like a lapping wave against a rock, they were eroding the defender's numbers and strength. To the heretics, there was no number. They kept coming and coming. Spectros wondered that even if they did win, the rot of these bodies would ruin Terra forever.

"Blood and tears Lamenters," Spectros said to the assembled maines that stood on the platform with him, straddling the kilometer-wide gap between the burning hive and the fresher one. Big enough to carry a small city, the platform had weathered some fierce assaults so far. The scattered dead and skeletal structures lining it was an appropriate testimony.

"Blood and tears!" echoed the Lamenters.

"Blood and tears!" echoed six thousand PDF troopers in their trenchcoats with their Guard X breather units over their mouths, crushing their voices to a dim mumble. They were better than any Imperial Guard unit Spectors had ever seen. Their well-oiled lasguns were each a hereditary relic.

Spectros steeled himself as he heard the first gunshots. First one, then two. Like the beginning of a rainstorm, the patter of gunfire grew louder and more frequent. The first Imperial Guard units emerged from the gaping gate to the burning hive moments later, their ashen uniforms and bloody faces all spoke of a terrible battle. Fleeing defeat, the cowards fled in blind terror, some even unarmed. They rushed by Spectros without a turn of the head, by his company of Lamenters without a word. All Spectros thought of them was this meant there was one less Guard regiment on Terra. Whoever these cowards were, they would not be allowed to live after such a shameful retreat.

"Into hell!" Spectors roared through the smoke. Pointing his powersword forward, Spectros rushed through the onslaught of retreating young men like a madman into a bear's cave. The tramp of Lamenter feet chased him and the ordered advance of the PDF followed them. Within moments, Spectros could not see the hive's walls through the choking smoke. It was like he was standing inside a black cloud. The shapes of fleeing men and the flashes of muzzles was all that could guide him. Calling upon his senses, Spectros began to fight.

Centuries of training took over as he picked out the silhouettes of his dim-witted enemies through the wall of smoke. These heretics were dressed in flak armor, festooned with spikes and wearing iron helmets. Charging, hungry for blood, these fanatics were too dim to spot Spectros or the other Lamenters. Bolterfire split through the smoke. Strobe flashes in the darkness that each announced the death of another damned invader.

Spectros clove the head from a passing attacker with fluid grace, then drove his power sword into another who did not see him. He felt a shot glance off his armor and turned to the attacker: a loyalist guardsman who'd been startled. With a start, the man retreated, allowing Spectros to continue.

"Widow formation!" Spectros bellowed. "Widow formation!" his powersword split a man from head to groin. He raised his bolt pistol and cracked off a shot into the head of a hooded overseer he spotted through the darkness. Around him, the thump of Astartes feet closed in about him like the beating wings of a passing bat colony. He did not even need to check on them to know they were in the dreaded Widow Formation. Maximizing their low numbers, the Lamenters advanced forward, leaving a carpet of dead heretics in their terrible wake. Now it was only invaders they spotted through the smoke. Cutting them down was a simple task, every way like killing blind lambs. Behind him, the crack of lasguns confirmed the presence of the PDF.

"Ahead brothers!" the bellow of a Lamenter warned through the fighting. Spectros blasted the last visible heretic from his feet, bringing his personal tally for the day to one hundred. He saw nothing at first, but froze when a pair of red ember eyes flashed at him through the black curtain. The thunder of bolterfire followed to kill the owner of those otherworldly eyes, but it was futile. They came anyway, colossal and terrilble.

"Fall back! Martyr formation!" Spectros cried, emptying his pistol and holstering it. The Lamenters withdrew, hopefully quickly enough to fight against the creatures that came bounding thorugh the flames. If this was hell, now it was complete. Daemons: on Terra!

They were the beasts known as bloodletters, blood-skinned and horned, wielding bastard swords of black iron. The creatures they rode were formidable monstrosities of solid golden brass. Their eyes were coals and from their fuming snouts emerged a tall spike. They resembled cattle-animals in spirit and bull-charge. Their untamable ferocity however was only that of a daemonic predator. Bolts left lines of sparks dancing across their metal bodies. Their riders hooted and swung their blades in decaptitating arcs.

The daemonic cavalry rode through the Lamenters, who ducked low. With the sound of two gods colliding, two of the brass daemons crashed into a space marine, impaling him and dragging him along behind while it charged onward. Death was not instant, as evidenced by the cries his Lamenters made. Eight Lamenters did not rise, heads separated from their shoulders, blood leaking down across their yellow armor, staining ancient heraldry. Enraged, Spectros rose and leapt onto the back of the nearest brass daemon. The riding bloodletter only had time to glance at him before Spectros clove the thing in two. It burned to ash as he raised himself up the beast's heaving flanks and drove his powersword into its neck. It took five monumental stabs to break the thing's hide. With a scream that sounded like a cross between a buckling hull and a lion, the beast burst into flame from within while deforming hideously. Spectros was hurled from the beast's back and painfully onto the ground.

For a moment, he was totally disoriented. Up was down, the world was only smoke, the sounds of screams and gunfire tearing through the air like knives. A lasbolt cracked off the ground to his right. Spectros felt something hit his side. He shook his dizzy head and rose up through the smoke, coughing slightly, and felt for his weapons, which he had lost when the beast had thrown him.

"[b] Your songs are at an end, mortal [/b] growled an unholy voice with the malevolence of the Eye of Terror in its words."[b]Submit yourself to chaos and you may still live as one of us [/b]." The speaker was shrouded in darkness that proved too thick even for Spectros. A shapless cloud amidst the smoke, blacker than the depths of the abyss was what rose up in front of him. Suspended in the depths of it were burning coal-eyes of bloody red. Spectros could vaguely see twin arms from either side of the daemon's torso.

"The Emperor protects daemon. My place is by his side!" Spectros spat aggressively. From the corner of his eye he could see a Lamenter getting cut down by a bloodletter. The shrieks of dying humans echoed from the way he'd come. Daemonic laughter met his ears every so often. The Terran air stank not only of smoke but of the warp itself. To show his commitment, Spectros rushed the daemon, his fists flying into the thing's gaseuous form.

"[b] As you wish, Lamenter. I will make you sing your last song…[/b]" the daemon said as Spectros was wrapped in the thick coils of inky smoke.

…

This wasn't a stop Usoran believed he could make, but he stopped none-the-less. His visions insisted and he would not dare disobey them. The unassuming research facility grew out of the side of the little dead world's moon like a fungus. Glassy domes formed a garden across its dusty surface. Usoran docked by the main entrance while the remainder of the fleet stayed over the moon. Stepping from his thunderhawk, Usoran, Odeen and five Dark Angels entered the abandoned facility.

"What is it in here that is more important than Terra?" asked Odeen with a grunt.

"Do not doubt the Lion's words, wolf," snapped one of the Dark Angels, Usoran neither noticed nor cared who.

"I know the Lion will not fail us," Usoran added as they shifted through the darkened hallways of the facility, passing empty rooms that had long ago been stripped bare of any useful gear. Only the looming shapes of counters and desks stood out, pale in the starlight, amidst the constant shadows of the hollow rooms.

"There's nothing here," Odeen grunted after the first half hour of empty rooms, "I do not want to keep Terra waiting." They turned another empty hallway and paused. There on the wall! A single closed hatch, a soft light above it. Upon the light in white paint was written "do not disturb." Usoran defied the sign with a kick of his might heel.

Beyond was a square chamber, a laboratory perhaps. Lockers lined the walls and a table rose from the middle of the room. But it was not the lockers that harnessed their attention.

"Inquisitor Rarend?" Usoran asked in bewilderment.

"AH!" the startled man was halfway across the room before stopping and squinting at the Astartes. It was him, dressed now in a merchant captain's uniform. In his hands he clutched his plasma pistol and a crude projectile pistol lay in the other. Only when he saw Usoran's face did Rarend's dirty mouth give a soft grin.

"The Emperor unites us," Rarend replied with a shallow nod of his head.

"This pirate is an inquisitor?" asked Odeen with a laugh when he spotted the other space marines bowing their heads. "You are not serious."

"Times are difficult, Space Wolf," replied Rarend. "I have taken to raiding stores like this one for supplies. All is not well in the worlds I have been to." Usoran nodded darkly, fearing Rarend already knew about Terra. "Warp storms have opened across the whole sector so it seems, small ones, but ever present. Chaos insurgents take this as a sign of chaos' imminent victory. There are revolts all across this whole sector. And so close to Terra too. The governors are struggling to keep the peace. I myself have been caught up in many of these rebellions." Rarend shook his head. "Mutants and heretics are everywhere. I cannot even wear my inquisitorial robes without attracting the wrath of heretics." Usoran and Odeen looked fearfully at one another. If there were revolts going around all across this sector, then why not others? Why not the sector where Holy Terra itself sat? Why not the whole Imperium? The implications were staggering. Usoran was all but certain that a weakening of the Emperor's power was causing the storms.

"Have you not seen them?" Rarend asked when he caught the dumb look on Usoran's face.

"We have been travelling too quickly," Usoran said, looking to the others.

"My ship noticed one last week. It was small, but we saw it," Odeen said. "The nose of the wolf is stronger than the eyes of the lion," he mumbled.

"Damnation. Then Terra cannot receive reinforcements," whispered one of the Dark Angels. Rarend said nothing, but there was a look of knowing in his face that made Usoran suspect he knew what was happening on Terra. Unable to continue guessing, Usoran finally asked.

"I knew it was true, I knew it was where you were headed," Rarend sighed. "Yes, I know. Distress signals are being sent out every minute. I would be amazed if the rest of the space marines do not soon get them." This was good to know. If Terra itself was broadcasting distress calls then surely the invasion fleets bogged down against Abaddon's daemon worlds would surely answer. Hopefully, any forces near Terra that weren't immobilized, fighting revolts would also answer.

"Come with us to Terra," Usoran offered, "you can bring His words to the besieged." Usoran didn't expect Rarend to decline, yet he did.

"There is other work for me. I am truly sorry," Rarend whispered. Usoran noticed him clutching his pocket. It wouldn't be until he was flying away from the research station that he began to think about it. For now, he ignored the detail and pressed Rarend for answers.

"Inquisitorial duty? What could be more important than the Emperor's personal safety?" Usoran asked. Again, Rarend's mood declined.

"I…I have to call others to Terra's aid," Rarend quickly said. "I cannot come. And…Usoran there's something else." He handed Usoran a data chip. "It's the latest distress call. In case you must know how dire the situation is." Usoran would listen to it later.

"What manner of inquisitor is this?" asked Odeen loudly with a scoff. "He looks like a ganger and speaks like the Emperor cannot be saved and chaos will prevail." Rarend glared at Odeen. Even in his lesser state, Rarend's glare could still freeze a man's soul.

"If you need encouragement like a common sled dog then…" Rarned's voice dropped to a whisper. "I do not know if it is heresy or not, but as storms blossom, there are Imperial cults who preach a new message." Odeen looked bored but Usoran listened closely. "They say that the final battle is here, that mankind will rise above chaos and win, destroying it forever, so we may rule the stars without fear. And they say…" Rarend looked from Odeen to Usoran. "…They say that the primarchs are returning. That they will be with you at the battle for Terra. Make of that what you will."

Less than an hour later, Usoran was once more in his ship with his fleet, meditating in an isolated room. Rarend's words still echoed in his ears. "The primarchs are returning."

He turned on the data-chip. The sound of a space marine's tortured screams filled his ears. He recognized the voice anywhere: it was Spectros, giving his last lament.

The combined fleet sailed through the warp, approaching Terra quickly, soon to join the final battle.

[i] The primarchs are returning [/i]

…

The hive it was on rose miles into the sky, pumping fresh oxygen to those who visited it from vents across its surface. The monastary was located on the hive's flat top: on a short plateau of marble that raised it powerfully above the mounds of shorter structures that reared their heads into the clouds around it. About it were the termite mounds of Terra, ugly and towering. Like a tiny pearl in the depths of an oyster's rough shell, the monastery was the most beautiful thing for miles around. The clouds drifted around its spires like hair. The hive itself did not rise above the monastary's shining black foundations in humble respect for the Astartes structure. There it stood, squat and foreboding, the only noteworthy building in sight atop the flat top of the mountainous hive.

In vile disrespect to the squat monastery, shells exploded throughout the buildings around it, throwing sooty smoke into the pale clouds overhead. Flames leapt up from collapsed structures. Overhead, planes of the Imperial Navy fought the invaders. The sound of battle echoed through every street, every building and every room.

The bald serf shook his head sadly and shut the windows. Only inside the monastery could there be any peace from the carnage outside. The thick walls were absolutely indominable and not even heretical artillery could crack them. The sound of their detonations was like a distant thunder in this hallowed place.

"Does the Imperial Guard hold its ground?" asked an ancient serf from inside the round room, his voice neither afraid nor inquiring, but dull with the weight of ages. The younger serf turned to his elder and bowed.

"It fights with all its stength. Emperor willing, they will hold chaos back from this sacred place," the young serf said powerfully. "Even without the Ultramarines here in flesh, the chapter's property will be protected." He turned to the center of the room, where a stone sarcophagus coloured the room with its grim but peaceful mood. The light grey of its stone fit well with the dimly lit blues and whites of the Ultramarines heraldry hanging from the walls. A cold effigy of Marneus Calgar lay atop it, marking the hero's last resting place. Standing, lorded over the body it had held, was the Black Tomb dreadnought, now forever still and forever watching. The blasphemous damage done to it was mended perfectly. The carving on the screaming man on its front was all that was ugly about the squatting giant. This part of the monastery was Calgar's tomb and the dreadnought was its guardian.

…

Swinging his lasgun around, Trooper Pylael loosed a volley of hot lasfire into the room. Charging through the dust left by the grenade, he spotted a man on the floor, squirming in pain. Pylael shot the man dead.

"Clear!" he shouted to his squad mates behind him. He ducked away from the window and peeked out a small hole blown into the building's side. The burning leman russ in the street was all that caught his eye. From this apartment, he could see the Ultramarine's monastery above the skyline.

"Get the door! Get the door!" said Hallken, drawing a grenade and running over to the next door leading from the room. Before the other guardsmen could get into position, lasfire cut through the door, hurled in from a heretic on the other side. The guardsmen took to the walls, avoiding the shots. Pylael pointed his gun at the door and shot back. The wooden door was cut to splinters under lasgun bolts. Hallken moved to use his grenade but dropped to the ground: a bolt through his chest. There were now eight men left in Pylael's squad.

Coming through the door came the first enemy soldier. The iron plates on his body creaked and thudded as he rushed into the room, firing his lasgun. The guardsmen put this crazed fool down and the one behind him, but the third one shot Pake in the forhead with his revolver. Pylael lunged forward, planting the heretic in the throat with his bayonette. A mutant came behind this one, a chainsword in his two hands. Pylael's squadmates came forward, bayonettes fixed, to answer the mutant and the others behind him.

The next moments were lost in a frenzy of shrieking and spilling blood. Pylael only felt a hot knife pulling across his hand and he only felt blood spray in his face from a cut neck. Who's neck was it? Did he make the kill? Pylael was too busy whacking away mutant blades.

The crack of a rifle split the melee, then another. Pylael nursed his hand as the fighting ended. The last of the mutants was dead and five of his squad was still breathing. Pylael froze when he saw a man of great size enter the room from the way the mutants had come in, shouldering a sniper rifle that looked capable of immobilizing a baneblade. He was dressed in flowing rags but carried the drawn likeness of the Ultramarine insignia proudly on his broad chest.

"Are you alright?" Afennor asked the bewildered squad of guardsmen in the room.

"Are you a space marine?" asked one of the guardsmen.

"A scout. I'm making my way to the monastery. Are there Ultramarines here?"

"No." Afennor nodded quickly.

"I need a transport. I need to get to the monastery and rejoin my chapter. I have much to say," Afennor replied. "Can you vox one in?" Two of the weary soldiers chuckled.

"Sir, the streets are full of mutants. A transport will get a rocket in the wheels," one stated with certainty. Afennor nodded.

"The rest of this floor is clear by the way," he said.

…

The hive had fallen. Flames coming from it blackened the sky. Columns and columns of enslaved civilians were being rounded up by the Death Guard and prepared for processing. Watching them was Paskatera, who had been selected by Vashuss personally for this attack. He was biting his lip and shivering in excitement at the slaughter to come. His daemon weapon bid him kill. Very soon, the assault on the Lamenter's fortress would be underway. Staring across the flatness of the leveled city that shuddered in fear at the burning hive before it, the fortress' walls bristled with defenders. The Lamenters would not die quickly.

Unfortunately, the attack could not begin until it had been sufficiently bombarded and their huge daemonic cannons were empty: depleted after leveling this part of the city. This would soon be changed. Paskatera wanted to see the whole thing.

A shift in time and space occurred and a brief hole in the warp coughed Mortarion forward before it was closed by the Emperor's distant presence. Paskatera smiled at the terrified whimpering of the Imperial citizens at the sight of the monster.

Soon they would have ammunition.

…

Afennor ducked behind the burning chimera, narrowly avoiding the stub fire from the nearby gun nest in the tower. He was nearly there. Afennor poked his rifle out from behind the machine and sighted the mutant's head from behind the pile of rubble he hid behind. Squeezing the trigger once, Afennor saw the mutant's head come apart. He dashed across the street and into another building. His knife was out in a flash.

"Ah! A space marine!" a horned man shouted when Afennor stormed the building to find eight heretics stuffing it. Afennor slashed down three of them before any had a chance to leave their firing positions at the shattered window. His knife moved up to block, stabbed, then ducked aside to slash a throat. A crazed heretic did manage to stab his back with a bayonette but Afennor carried an Ultramarine's form. He shrugged off the attack and kicked the hetetic's knees out from beneath him. Afennor jumped back to the door, allowing the survivors to chase him with their knives and bayonettes. Forcing them into the door one at a time, the young scout sent each heretic to the floor, bleeding and dying. The final heretic fled the scout, reloading his lasgun to try and give him a ranged death. Afennor shot this last man in the skull.

Afennor slunk over the the window and stopped in disgust. In the street, as clear as day, stood the giant skinless form of a great horned beast. Across it was carved the symbol of Khorne and from its head came black ivory horns. It was stomping towards the far buildings, away from Afennor. He could not behold its fierce face as was glad he could not.

'A daemon? On Terra?' Afennor thought. With little difficulty, lined up its head with his scope. He held his breath and fired. The daemon's head snapped forward while one of its horns broke from its scalp. The beast collapsed into a puddle of blood as it died, splashing loosely on the tortured street. The puddle remained for a moment before catching fire and burning away to oblivion.

'No,' Afennor thought in some fear. He felt little comfort when he spotted a squad of loyalist guardsmen coming across the street. He felt little comfort when they told him he had made it to the Imperial-controlled section of the city. Even as he ascended the stairs to his chapter's monastery amid cheers from exhausted Imperial Guard, Afennor couldn't forget the daemon.

He took his first step into the monastery.

…

"Master," the young serf said from the window, "a man…he looks like an Astartes." The older serf rushed to the window and looked down at the plateau below. Indeed there was a man with a tall frame and carrying an Ultramarine's sniper rifle walking into the monastery. They exchanged confused looks.

The sound of a creaking metal behind them caught their attention. They turned to the source: the Black Tomb, the dreadnought. Its two huge arms shifted and it stepped forward. With a swing of its mighty form, the Black Tomb took a step, then another, then another. The dreadnought's mighty frame stomped around Calgar's sarcophagus. With a swing of its bulk, the dreadnought briefly inspected the effigy, then the two serfs, before the metal giant carried its thunderous bulk from the chamber. Both serfs were left gaping at the doorway.

"Can it…do that?" asked the younger serf to the older. He didn't need to be reminded that the dreadnought was empty.

"It…it…" the older serf was an ancient man many centuries of experience. But this had even him silenced.

"The machine spirit must have sensed the Ultramarine," the younger serf suggested, fumbling for answers as three serfs rushed into the tomb so they could see for themselves the empty space where the Black Tomb had stood.

"No," the older serf said as he fell to his knees. Tears dribbled from his gray eyes. "That dreadnought was built with parts scavenged from Robute Guilliman's stasis chamber. It's him, it must be him, from beyond." One by one, the other serfs fell to their knees. Each one was crying.


	40. Rogal Dorn's Revenge

Perturabo looked away from the distant fortress and back to his cannons. Paskatera could tell the primarch was impatient. A plague marine was just cramming the last prisoner into the last cage. The door slammed shut and a rusty padlock was applied.

With a swing and a grind, the final cage was raised up to the top of the arm that suspended it. A faithful chaos servant tied the chord that suspended the cage in place and turned the arm to bring the cage in line with the others. Paskatera licked his lips in excitement, honoured to behold the power of Mortarion firsthand.

Each cage was crammed full of civilians taken prisoner from the burning hive. The tally of souls the Death Guard had harvested to bloat the cages was four hundred and fifty thousand. Their praying, sobbing and general braying mixed together into a buzzing chorus of despair that hung in the air like a rag. Thrashing bodies, fearful faces of men, women and children looking out from every angle, all cruelly caged behind thick rusting bars of mighty cages. They hung in the air like a wall of hollow metal, hundreds in number, spanning a kilometer, over a sprawling trench cut deep into the naked earth. This chasm was deep enough to swallow an Astartes. If one soul amongst the caged human knew their approaching fate, they would strangle one another to merciful death or beat their skulls to a pulp against the bars.

Stanidng below the swinging boxes of people, Mortarion drew his horrible scythe. His pallid wings swung apart, washing the skin of his victims with a sour wind. His arms stretched, embracing the kilometer-long wall. To the eyes of the prisoners, he was the dark angel of death. Mortarion used the blade of his scythe to scatch a symbol of Nurgle, made of pure green flame into air. His wings beat once more, blowing the symbol into a green mist and waving it across the wall of cages. The mist crept into each cage, touching each captive, damning all of them to a vile daemonic curse.

Paskatera leered in fascination as the prisoners all began to choke, cough and make all other sorts of gutteral noises. The air was soaked with their bubbling rasps as the curse took its brutal effect. In every cage, people were writhing and thrashing. Healthy skin, young and old, darkened to a necrotic black. Babes turned to shriveled sacs hanging from the diseased husks of their rotting mothers. Hands that reached for freedom through the gaps in bars turned bony and still. Eyes turned milky white and greenish tumors broke out across their bodies. Oozing pus fountained up through their skin, dribbling like rain into the trench below them. Their skin shrunk up against their bones and, one by one, every caged human dropped to the bottom of their cage. Every cage was quickly carpeted with a rotting fleshy carpet of corpses.

The rot did not stop there. The carpets of fast decaying flesh began to putrify, turning to a slushy organic stew. The rain dribbling from each cage turned to a downpour and then to a gushing flood. Liquified human remains flooded the trench. Paskatera laughed when the transformation of four and a half thousand people to a stinking moat had finished. The cages were empty and the trench was full.

Turning from his handiwork, Mortarion turned to Perturabo and his batteries daemonic cannons.

"Drink," Perturabo commanded his machines. The cannons upon their carriages rolled their four brass wheels backwards. Without the aid of crew, the daemonic machines lifed their hollow snouts to the sky. Long tubes licked out from their rears like the tails of devils, dipping into the human quagmire that filled the trench. Loud gurgling followed as each cannon drank its fill. Now the cannons had their ammunition

"I will lead the attack when the bombardment is over," Perturabo growled.

The first cannon fired.

…

The cannons fired their first volley. Colonel Jayson looked down from the trenches in dismay as solid balls of greenish matter exploded down into the trenches below. The PDF and Guardsmen in those trenches were truly to be pitied. The rotting matter that the cannons were vomiting at them burned flesh and rotted skin. Tough, muscular guardsmen were reduced to putrid corpses by splashes of the daemonic filth. Even Jayson flinched in discomfort when the filth began to coaleace into human forms, writhing in anguish, grabbing out at anyone nearby. No doubt, the poor souls of those cursed to create this putrid stew were still trapped inside. Jayson thought it best not to tell his men what exactly the cannons were firing at them.

Some of them had families in that hive.

"Men, prepare to repel the heretics," Jayson shouted to the walls. It was useless to address the trenches, flooded as they were with rotten sludge. He looked doubtfully back at the fortress behind him and thought of the ancient relics within. All that stood between the heretics and those relics was this wall and his men. Jayson would die before giving up. He heard the gun batteries atop his towers speak. Gazing through his magnoculars again, he saw the land heave under explosions. When the dust cleared, he could see the heretical army coming forward.

A swarming marching wave of giant metal insects, gray and rusty, inscribed with daemonic runes and covered in fleshy boils. Daemon engines. At their head stood Mortarion and Perturabo.

"Colonel, my space marines will hold the ramparts for as long as we can," the brother-captain of the Lamenters told the colonel. "Stay true to the Emperor and they cannot defeat us."

A ball of molten putridity splashed into the courtyard. It would be followed by more.

"Get inside or we're all dead," Jayson warned. "We'll make our last stand inside the fortress. Evacuate the relics. This fortress is theirs." The rain of daemonic artillery shots grew thicker. Jayson had to run.

…

The clouds parted. Below them on the ground, Afennor could see the splashed puddle of whatever material the daemons were throwing at the fortress. It coated the whole trench network guarding the walls. Afennor cared not to think of the fates of the men in those trenches. Round orange fireballs of thunderbolt missiles were already leaping up amidst the mud around the fortress, splitting apart those dark shapes that waited down there. The angels of the Imperial Navy flew in amidst the valkyrie wings, engines lit white.

"Stand by!" shouted the storm trooper next to him. Afennor steeled his jaw and closed his eyes, fighting against the weightless feeling the vakyrie's punishing swoop gave him. Afennor turned from the window and patted his rifle. The primarch was by his side. The primarch!

With a shudder, the valkyries touched down on the sprawling rockrete landing pad crowning the fortress. The hatches opened and squads of disciplined stormtroopers bolted forth in rehearsed formations, weapons raised. Afennor was last out and glided to the edge of the landing pad to survey the field of slaughter.

Surging towards the fortress in an unending tidal wave of ant-small figures, was an army of heretics. Mutated limbs and heads stung his eyes like the contents of a planetary freakshow. Their unhealthy, sunken appearance made Afennor think of a shrunken head. He didn't kill any: they weren't worth a bullet.

The fortress was little more than a keep ringed by a fat wall of the finest Imperial masonry. The grand spires of the palace still carried their beauty despite the burning hive that formed the backdrop to this wretched battle. Proud Imperial eagles gazed outward from flat walls of invincible brickwork as though to challenge the invaders, who covered every visible part of the courtyard and its walls with evil banners. It was sad to think this beauty would be despoiled. Alas, there was work to be done.

Afennor's ears were shattered under the rocky belch of Thunderbolt engines. A V-shaped squadron of them lashed overhead, guns spraying heat down upon the foe below. Their missiles streamed brilliantly forth, leaving white trails of smoke in their wake. More of the invaders disappeared in the resulting devastation. Afennor turned back to the landing pad where five Lamenters had already appeared, running to the top of the ramp that led into the soul of the fortress.

Each of the yellow-armored Astartes was spotted with marks of a combat hard fought. The impressions of claw marks were moulded into one man's pauldrons. Another man was missing a hand that was still freshly reddened. Each wore a skin of filmy battle grime.

"Take these away, initiate," one Lamenter said to Afennor, holding forth a sealed wooden case, remarkably flawless in the hands of such a bruised warrior. Afennor took the case, knowing it was an artifact of the fortress. Whatever it was, it was ancient beyond years. Chaos no doubt had come to corrupt it.

"Perturabo, Mortarion," gasped another Lamenter, "they are both here. Where is your commander?"

"He comes. Where's everyone else?" Afennor heard the shuttle set down. Its brilliant blue doors hissed open, spraying hydraulic gas as pistols lifted the flaps of the doors aside. "This will be safe. My commander…" Afennor turned to the dreadnought that stomped forth from the shuttle. The Lamenters took the honor of meeting the living primarch and retreated down the ramp. Afennor hurried to the shuttle.

"My lord," Afennor offered the case. The dreadnought regarded him and gestured to the shuttle with a four-fingered boulder hand. Afennor placed the case inside the shuttle's safety, then hurried after the Black Tomb while its piston legs bore it down the ramp and into the besieged fortress. Afennor knew they would not have to go far: the rattling whine of bolterfire already reached his ears.

He did not turn his head as he ran to battle. He did not look at the droves of dying guardsmen and injured, faded Lamenters that lined the hallways. He only looked at the dreadnought that led the way. The spirit of Guilliman, so Afennor was certain, lay within. Were the situation not so bleak, he might actually be laughing.

The pair ended their short pilgrimage to battle at the top of a grand staircase that ended upon the surface of a humbling auditorium: the very bosom of this great Astartes stronghold. One half was held by the Imperial Guard and Lamenters. The other half was firmly in chaos' claws. The gunfire was perfectly contained inside the sprawling room.

The nine loyal primarchs were immortalized in granite and incorporated into the structure as columns. The concave roof was raised hundreds of meters up and every one of those statues was wider than a small cottage. The seats that had once covered the floor lay in wrecked piles, their cushions torn to snow. The floor was big enough to hold a pitched battle. The far wall was dim even to Afennor. He followed the dreadnought down the stairs, unafraid of the lasfire that came his way.

Afennor peeked from behind the Black Tomb and let fly a single shot at the heretics. A burly maggot-fleshed brute whose hands both carried heavy guns was beheaded by the blast. Afennor turned his rifle to the next foe, dropping him too. Only the memory of how many invaders he had seen from atop the fortress gave him reason to refrain from taking gratification.

Afennor heard screeching metallic crashes against the Black Tomb: the sound of mortal bullets uselessly panging off the machine. Chaos gave all it had to bring down the Black Tomb, but no shot found weakness. Still following the dreadnought, Afennor saw it flip a chair out of the way, along with three heretical troops. It reached forward and threw a daemon aside like a rag. Its godly fists left nothing standing.

"Forward!" Afennor heard from the rear a bellowed order. The answering warcry was fit for Guilliman as the Imperials surged forwards, bringing the full weight of their legions crashing against chaos. They broke through the gap between their sides and joined the Black Tomb in pressing chaos back. An irresistible wave, the Imperials sent chaos to the single doorway at the end of the auditorium. Afennor stepped over the scores of mangled chaos bodies as he followed his master to the door. For him this was no fight. Only the odd cracking pop from his rifle.

Yet, this was not victory, for against this rushing Imperial flood, chaos had set a dam. It took the form of one daemon and one name. With the power of an earthquake, he broke through the ancient wall, creating a much bigger doorway in place of the smaller one with the weight of his pass. Even Afennor, who was privy to a living miracle, could not believe what his young eyes showed him. He felt his chest tighten and his fearless heart quiver.

He was at least four times the height of the tallest Astartes. Across his body was stormcloud coloured armor, broken by flame coloured bands striped with black. His armor was decorated with the mummified heads of Imperial heroes. What little of his flesh showed was rough with muscle and brown. In his crushing grip he beared a two-handed maul that could devastate a tank in one unstoppable swing. His horned head was covered by a masked helmet that brought a skull to mind, all dressed in bladed spikes. He was Perturabo.

"Die…die…" whispered Afennor, sighting the beast's eyeholes with his rifle. He fired once, twice, three times. Each shot had no affect. Afennor wondered if he was out of ammunition. He looked down at his rifle, then back up at Perturabo. The daemon was sprinting across the floor towards the Black Tomb. Afennor sprinted for the shadows and felt a crushing force break into his back like an ocean wave. He soared through the air and slammed into the floor, as did everything inside the auditorium: slammed by the shockwave Perturabo's charge created. Only the dreadnought still stood. Afennor rose only to have his ears shattered by the sound of battling gods. Guilliman and Perturabo battled in the center of the wreckage.

With deep heaves of his arms, Perturabo beat his hammer into the Black Tomb. His voice was like burning thunder, crashing out of his lips and filling the chamber with terror.

"BREAK AND FALL!" Perturabo roared. He swung his hammer once more, crashing into the dreadnought with the force of a railtrain. The Black Tomb absorbed each godly blow, advancing through the storm of Perturabo's swings without slowing. The hammer came once more and the Black Tomb took it in his hands. Daemon and dreadnought, primarch and primarch, eye to eye, they fought for the hammer, Perturabo's roars filling the chamber.

"Guilliman! My lord!" Afennor cried, shooting uselessly into Perturabo. Around him, he could hear the fight had resumed: a lethal melee as ruthless as the one between the two giants that dominated the room. Only when he was out of bullets did Afennor stop and take cover, to watch uselessly as his lord battled the daemon.

With the sound of a splitting oak, the hammer's shaft broke apart under the struggling hands. The ruin was cast away and both titans leapt into the other, brawling in the most primal fashion. The dreadnought's iron fists pummeled the daemon's armor, reaching up towards his throat. Perturabo clawed at the Black Tomb, trying to push the machine over.

For a full minute they wrestled, neither gaining advantage over the other. The chamber shook violently, though not under the force of the battling giants. Afennor dodged a falling piece of rockcrete as some of the ceiling came down. The Imperial Navy or chaos was bombarding the auditorium! While more shells crashed, more blasted the ceiling and more holes exploded into the roof, some people began to flee the falling auditorium. The Imperials fled in one direction and chaos drained from the room in another, but the two great combatants did not break their embrace of death. Even Afennor could feel each blow against his lord vibrating through the dense stone floor.

"My lord!" Afennor cried. Perturabo glanced his direction and for a gasp in time, Afennor could feel the primarch's hot eyes upon him. It was like standing naked before the warp, like confessing one's loyalty to the throne in a coven of the damned. Those two empty eyeholes pointed on him and Afennor was genuinely amazed that ruination did not visit him. Instead, the Black Tomb broke his fist into Perturabo's face. The helm shattered like glass. Afennor gasped.

"YOU INSOLENT RELIC! GO BACK TO THE DUST OF THE PAST!" roared Perturabo, lifting the Black Tomb and hurling him across the floor. He landed in a miniature earthquake, throwing up a haze of pale dust. "I AM STRONG! NOW YOU SEE? YOU CANNOT DEFEAT ME!" Perturabo's face was naked. It was like a fang-toothed skull forged of pure steel, in a constant lipless grin, with sharp eyes that housed a hot red flame. Upon his brow were two stubby horns, like nails. Though it was steel it moved like flesh. The eyes even changed sizes to reflect his mounting arrogance.

"YOU FOUGHT WELL, BUT JUST LIKE YOUR FALSE EMPEROR, YOU LACK TRUE IRON!" Perturabo stepped towards the Black Tomb, who was just getting back up. More shells fell. The ground heaved in protest to the raw destruction. Dust fell from the ceiling like rain. Afennor could barely see. Would they both be buried under rubble?

With a swing of his great fist, the Black Tomb beat the nearest primarch statue and flexed his fingers. Rushing through the dust like an obsidian meteor, the dreadnought slammed into Perturabo like a battering ram. The daemon grabbed the Black Tomb and hurled the machine through the air, towards Afennor, nearly killing the young scout.

"YOU LACK TRUE IRON!" cackled Perturabo as he turned to the Black Tomb and advanced on his fallen opponent and Afennor. He was walking towards Afennor. Afennor panicked and ran, hiding behind a fallen slab of ceiling. How could Guilliman lose?

There was a grind, then a crack, then a sound of crumbling rock, like a constant rockslide. The dust that hung in the air over Perturabo like a stranded cloud began to shift as a wind blew it. Afennor looked up at what was happening and flung himself to the side. The Black Tomb did likewise, bolting up and hobbling towards the staircase. Perturabo looked upwards as a great long shadow descended upon him.

It was the sound of a falling star, a splitting mountain and a clash of continents. One of the primarch statues, the statue of Rogal Dorn with all his tones of unyielding granite, had just toppled onto Perturabo. As formidable the daemon of siege and iron might have been, a mountainous weight had crushed him.

The statue had depicted the primarch as calm and calculating, the Imperial Fists heraldry draped about his power-armored form. Dorn had looked so at peace. Now it lay in death, fallen, shattered, but still at peace as it lay across the floor on its front. From beneath it, Afennor sighted the gnarled limb of the daemon primarch go limp and then crumble to ash, never to be seen again.

How had the statue fallen so cleanly? It was built by the best masons the Imperium had, so how did it fall without taking any pieces of the ceiling with it? The Black Tomb had struck it, perhaps loosening it and there was the shelling, but not even that surely couldn't have done the needed damage to that human monolith. And yet, fall it did, by what Afennor could only call a miracle. Even after his death, Rogal Dorn had killed Perturabo.

Alongside the Black Tomb, alongside Robute Guilliman, Afennor ascended the grand staircase just in time to escape the ceiling's final fall.

…

The Despoiler threw the mangled corpse of the hooded messenger across the bridge. He landed in a twisted heap of split bone. An amputated three-fingered hand was ground to gruel beneath Abaddon's armored foot. He let out a roar of fury. His thoughts were racing, his blood was boiling. Teeth clenched he turned his sword on the mutant lord beside him.

"Please my lord," pleaded the burly monstrosity, bounding across the bridge of the _Planetkiller, _"spare me." Abaddon stomped up to him and took the colossal mutant by the throat. He pulled him in, buckling the giant over, forcing his eyes to gaze into Abaddon's.

"There will be a change of plans. We fight no longer to conquer, we fight to destroy. Order the fleet to unleash their payloads onto the cities. Burn them to nothing. One trillion deaths to avenge Perturabo," hissed Abaddon.

"The souls…" gasped the lord.

"I do not want Terran souls anymore. If Terra will not die willingly then we will bomb it to blackened slag. Unleash everything. Put the faithful legions in contact with me," Abaddon growled. He finally released the lord and turned hotly towards Holy Terra. Horus, he knew, didn't lose another primarch when he sieged Terra. Horus had sieged Terra more efficiently than he!

'Perhaps it was a mistake to try and claim spoils, corrupt artifacts,' Abaddon thought. 'No more of this land war. I shall watch Terra burn. Then, when the flames have consumed all, I go to the palace and the legions to Camlan.'

…

Deep in the Immaterium, Tzeentch opened its many eyes from his long, still slumber. His tired eyes were too heavy with exhaustion to notice that his throne room no longer had an exit. He was entombed here, severed from his beloved maze, if the maze truly existed anymore. Unknowing of his dillema, the frail god of change reached out across the cosmos and opened an invisible eye over Terra.

The batteries of chaos ships were hurling millions of bombs down at the planet. Hundreds of square miles were burning. They looked like huge gardens of living flame growing out across the solid grey of Terra's surface. The death-screams of billions of people were reaching out to him. The intensity of their grief was sour to him, stinging his senses like the taste of a rotten lemon. Nurgle, on the other hand, giggled at the destruction.

'Not even Abaddon can keep this up for all time,' Tzeentch thought. He closed the eye over Terra and it winked from existence. 'Soon, he will have to strike at the Emperor.' Tzeench looked up from his throne at the future, hanging from a hook off the ceiling.

Tzeentch looked deep into its murky depths. The deeper he looked, the dimmer his vision, until he was blind. Tzeench pulled from the future and sat down, to think. With the future covered from him, he could only study the present. He sent millions of eyes out across the galaxy to spy on the worlds of the Imperium.

He beheld worlds in revolt. Civil war between worshippers of chaos and the local Imperial authorities. Upon most in Segmentum Solar, the local PDF was locked in a dire conflict with such rebels. Tzeentch witnessed blood-soaked cities, bombed out, dominated by snipers. Tzeentch witnessed sprawling deserts where highly mobile armored columns battled one another. Tzeentch witnessed hives, where a constant bleeding battle was waged nonstop between the two sides in a chaotic brawl of planetary scale. Tzeench witnessed farmsteads being fought over by militia. Tzeench witnessed opulent cities besieged from within by the mutant underclass, which mobbed the streets and clashed with armored enforcers. Tzeench's many mouthes grinned at this: the faithful had seen the warp storms all across the galaxy. They knew the age of chaos was coming. Abaddon needed only corrupt Terra, then Tzeentch could be free of this miserable weakness his infinite body suffered.

'I am weak because there is such little energy of mortal plotting to feed me,' Tzeench thought yet again. 'Where does the energy that sustains me mostly come from?' Tzeentch knew much of it came from the minds of the galaxy's collective masses, but there was one specific source that kept him at his strongest. It was like a chain tethered to his mind, invisible and insubstantial, there but not there, feeding him his immortal life. As with a chain, Tzeentch could follow its length to its source.

Tzeentch followed this metaphorical chain through the immaterium to a vast scheme, the largest Tzeench had ever seen. The scheme was his heart: if it died, so too would he. There it hung in the immaterium, a loaf of solidified dreams and hopes and whatever else sustained the scheme. Tzeench pressed his face into the scheme but as with the future, the deeper he looked the dimmer his eyes. The scent of the followers of chaos was strong about it. The smell drifted up from the scheme in an intoxicating vapor that carried the familiar scent.

'It is a scheme of the faithful,' Tzeentch understood. 'Therefore, it must be Abaddon and his ambitions.' Now Tzeench truly understood the full scale of the dilemma that threatened to end his unending life. If Abaddon failed, he would die.

At last, unable to bear the wight of his own weakness, Tzeentch shuffled back to his throne room and collapsed into his throne. Back to sleep he went.


	41. The Hydra's Mission

The hive fell, split completely in half by the bomb. With a crash, the remains of it toppled down into a cloud of deadly ruin. Debris, dust and bodies fell from the split. Another bomb found the hive and all this was lost behind a leaping curtain of daemonic fire.

Leaving smoke trails in the wake of their plunge, these warp-infused bombs killed hundreds of millions each, detonating deep within the mountainous hives and consuming their whole populations in a murderous inferno. Lives, communities, families, all wasted by the frenzied barrage of Abaddon's vengeance.

Nearby, another untouched hive was hit. It collapsed into itself, the spire withdrawing down into a rising cloud of black soot and warp flame. Through the streets, fleeing soldiers of the Imperial Guard and the Terran PDF scrambled uselessly from the destruction. There were falling bombs in front of them, behind them and on either side. The intensity of the heat brought an unimaginable death to whole regiments. First their skin melted, then their organs ignited while their blood boiled in their veins.

And still more bombs descended from the sky. Not since the Horus Heresy had so many people died at once.

All of this lay outside the void shields. Afennor took no comfort in the protection they offered. The sky looked like it was on fire while the warp flame struggled with the shielding to get in. From the Ultramarine's monastery, Afennor shook his head in disbelief at the scale of destruction that he witnessed. How many more bombs would fall before chaos ran out?

Turning from the apocalypse, Afennor headed back inside. Everything was lit orange by the omnipotent flame. The downcast eyes of despairing serfs shone dimly in the light. The brilliant stained glass windows were terrifyingly beautiful in the hot orange that illuminated them. With everything coloured by the unnatural fire, Afennor felt like he wore orange glass across his eyes.

"What do we do?" Afennor asked the three serfs in the hall.

"We can only wait," replied one of them. "The screams of billions of dying souls warned the Emperor of treachery in ancient days. Maybe the screams of a trillion dying souls will warn him now?" Afennor could hear the desperation in his voice. Not even he believed what he had just said.

"I pray the Emperor's palace is protected as we are," one of the other serfs whispered.

"If it weren't, we would know," Afennor answered confidently. "Perhaps we should try to contact surviving elements of the Lamenters and reach the PDF…"

"The Lamenters are as helpless as we are. All we can do is hope for their bombs to end," one serf mumbled.

"And after that? When these bombs are finished, what few survivors remaining down here will have a whole daemon world to contend with," Afennor mentioned. "We have the primarch, but they have five and Abaddon."

"We'll just have to await a miracle then. Emperor willing, help is coming," a final serf stated.

Afennor could only shrug and sit down to await the bombs to stop. He closed his eyes and prayed.

…

The shield was unbroken by the shells. However, through the curtain of fire, swept three small projectiles that did not explode. Their bright yellow colour was quickly recognized by the men at the dock upon the side of the towering hive. In this time when all hope was fading, these soaring angels were the salvation each man had been praying for. Like gifts given by the Emperor himself, three Astartes thunderhawks of the Lamenters chapter swept in underneath the flaming voidshields and flew peacefully above the city. The gate to the landing pad, half a kilometer above ground, yawned open to give the three thunderhawks entrance to the mighty hive. They lifted themselves slowly down to the rockrete shield that lay inside the manmade cave beyond the cave mouth. A quick exchange of coded messages flew between the thunderhawks and the port.

"Authentication codes verified," beeped the hollow echo of a servitor's voice through the cave-like landing chamber while the hiss of thunderhawk jets softened and died, their last echoes coursing through the room.

With a hiss, the three drawbridges on the hawks flapped down, releasing sixty yellow-clad Lamenters, who filed silently out from their ships.

Four squares of PDF troopers scrambled to meet them, removing their black caps, shouldering their lasguns, and saluting as one. All around them, crews that worked on the lines of craft that shared the landing chamber stopped their work to spy upon the newly arrived space marines.

"Colonel Staffenser, 1023rd PDF of Holy Terra," a brightly decorated officer announced, stepping through his men to salute to the yellow-clad giants before him. He brushed his gray beard and looked across the silent company of Astartes warriors. "How goes the day?"

"The heretics will not stop bombarding Terra until they are out of shots. Until their supply is finished, we sit alive only by the Emperor's mercy," replied the captain: the only helmetless man in the formation. "We have come here for refuge. As for the rest of the chapter, they are missing. We need accommodation to rest and meditate."

"I can see what can be arranged brother-captain," replied the colonel. "Pardon me my lord for being blunt, but the men want to know how many of you there are still left." The ensuing silence was answer enough.

"We lost Spectros to a daemon. We are leaderless," the captain sadly stated. "Our only hope is to remain where we are and weather chaos until our salvation finds us. As for my men…" the captain waved his hands to the space marines around him, "where is the most secure place they may stay?" The colonel didn't need to think hard for the answer to the marine's question.

"In the command bunker, deep within the hive. But not even you could get entrance without a proper invitation. It sits inside the cave of freedom, wherein lies the shield generator that maintains the primary power conduit that feeds the voidshields that keep us safe." The colonel directed his men away. They marched into the shadows of the cavern, hats back on and guns held smartly upward in a parade formation.

"Captain, I could take you to the shelters near the cave. It is a fortified series of tunnels and only an hour from the command bunker. It is not much but I could arrange for you to be placed there until the bombs abate and the rest of your chapter can be contacted..." The approving nod of the captain silenced his further offers.

"That will do. Just take us inside," the captain said. The colonel allowed himself a childish grin as he carried the honour of leading sixty Lamenters Astartes into the hive.

"…There are four billion people in this region. Hive Sarlannoi lies fifty miles north of us. We're a ways west of Hive London, if it still stands," the colonel was saying as the forty marines marched through the tunnel behind him. Dim lighting forced the colonel to squint through the darkness, though there wasn't much to see but a great ugly tube of rockrete with holes lining it, leading to the residential and industrial wings of the hive.

"Why, good colonel, is there so much secrecy around the command bunker?" asked the captain.

"The shield generator is a delicate thing. The command bunker's proximity to it makes it a place of high security, as is the whole part of the hive around the cave of freedom," replied the colonel. "A lot would be laid naked to the guns of the despoiler if it goes down. All of the island."

"What island?"

"This region we're in, it's was once a large island, before layers of hives covered everything," the colonel remarked while he led them down a shaft that yawned open ahead of them. "One by one, down here. I'll signal for my shuttle to spirit us to the center of the hive where we'll be safest. The superstructure is extremely strong in the middle." The captain clambered down the narrow shaft after the colonel.

"A well designed hive you have colonel," he remarked. "I pray it is not populated completely by mutants like every other hive I've ever seen in my centuries."

"Not this one brother-captain. Of course, mutant hives have a low birth rate. They say mutants are starting to be born sterile."

"It is so. Perhaps this hive is already sterile? I don't hear anyone and haven't heard anyone. Unusual for a hive."

"Everyone is either on watch or hiding in the sump. We might have to wait a while before someone can get off watch to get my shuttle over here." The colonel sent a transmission to his shuttle once he reached the lower tunnel: much of the same sight. The captain came down behind him. "The shuttle is on its way. It will come up thorugh here and spirit us off."

The captain snapped the colonel's neck.

When the colonel's shuttle arrived a half hour later, the forty marines piled in to the fat vehicle on its rolling wheels. To the captain, the shuttle looked like a beetle's shell on wheels.

"Where's the colonel, brother-captain?" asked the driver.

"Busy," replied the captain once the last marine was inside.

When the doors were thrown open again, the Lamenters were faced with a wall of fifty PDF troopers, assembled on the dock beside the entrance to a tall, square structure that jutted from the floor of the hive: the entrance to the shelter. They were close to the so-called "cave of freedom."

The door opened and the captain stepped out. From the sheath at his side, he drew a short gladius.

"Where is the colonel?" an unsteady voice asked the captain.

"Hydra Dominatus! Chaos eternal!" Dressed in Lamenter's colours, the Alpha Legion attacked. Men were punched to the ground, knocking over the men behind them. The chaos space marines of the Alpha Legion fought as they fought best: lashing out and striking the lethal blow with total surprise as a weapon. Ranks of PFD troopers hit the floor at once while those few shots the survivors could manage did little but anger the Alpha Legion further.

"For chaos!" the captain laughed while a nest of cybernetic serpents broke from the armor around the base of his glove. The last surviving PDF soldier was lifted into the air by these. His pathetic choking persisted for a few delicious minutes as the serpents choked him to death. Vashuss cast aside the dead man and surveyed the massacre.

"Hasten to the cave of freedom while they are still off balance," Vashuss commanded. "Pertesh, go with Krou. Everyone else, with me." And then they were gone, slipped into the shadows.

…

"This way," captain Maelen led his troops over the pile of dead PDF troopers, holding his breath to keep the pungent odor of death that rose from their broken bodies from filling his nose. He had never served with Astartes before. To fight them was a horror he had never hoped to endure. The sight of these dead men, broken like clay figures before an abandoned shuttle, reminded Maelen why.

"First squad, follow the signature," Maelen whispered to the PDF troopers he commanded, stalking through the darkness, their footsteps no louder than a rat's. "Hurry, the cave of freedom is nearby," he added. They crept through the hell of shadow of the hive's innermost belly. They were sixty men in total: miserable numbers to fight Astartes with. However, Maelen knew others were being sent in. The whole regiment, in fact now converged on the traitors' intended target. Each man had individually sworn to the Emperor that they wouldn't let it be destroyed. Maelen hoped the shield's defenses were weighty enough to repel the invasion so they needn't.

'It's close,' Maelen thought while they snuck through the blackness of the tunnels, passing empty structures that rose out of the ground liky skyscrapers and attached to the ceiling like stalagtites. They walked through empty streets, over bridges and at the very prepice of an abyssal ravine. Not a soul they encountered, not a noise they whispered and not a shot they took.

Maelen's heart panicked when he turned a corner. Before him, amidst the blackness silhouettes created by rising structures and spires in the interior of the hive city, were four of the traitors. Their yellow armor made good targets in what little light the darkness shades over his eyes could give his sight. There they were, clearer than targets at a firing range, in the midst of a garden of residential cubes and the looping maze of the hive's steel arteries.

The captain fired his own bolter at the traitors with conviction, yelling at his men to do the same. Lasgun rounds glanced off their powered armor more easily than light off a mirror, but the relentless assault of Maelen's explosive bolts caught one of the chaos worshippers in the mask. The traitor fell back, slaughtered. The others withdrew into the city.

"After them! For the Emperor!" were the captain not so invigorated by his kill he might calm himself long enough to consider the ambush that most likely awaited him. Through the alleyways of hive structures they ran, going down the only way the traitors could have fled. His whole command of young PDF troops were close behind, all of them vying to be the first to shoot the traitors when they saw them.

They turned a tight corner. Maelen leapt back in time to dodge a lashing return of bolterfire.

"First squad! Cover behind those crates. Second and third, both of you garrison that building. Everyone else: fire fire!" Maelen turned the corner to spot five yellow-armored traitors hidden behind a large pipeline that broke the surface of the rockrete street like the back of a leviathan. White sparks flared up from it and the building behind them bellowed dust under lasfire. Maelen sighted a second one with his bolter. He whispered a prayer to the Emperor and fired. His marksmanship training paid off and a second chaos marine thudded to the floor. The punishing lasfire of his command was surpressing the others, who now fought for their lives. Maelen laughed as he thought of his reward from the governor of this hive. Drunk with dreams of victory, he did not see the others appearing out from the darkness.

"Stop," the voice said in both his ears. No, two voices. His earpiece and a loud space marine. The firefight abated. There they were: in Lamenter armor, surrounding them. Thirty at least, holding the surrendering PDF under their bolters. The chaos marines Maelen was so certain he could massacre emerged from behind the pipe.

"Captain, we've got our network working again," the voice in his ear told him. "For some reason, our vox signals were being jammed." From the darkness, Maelen saw an ultramarine scout slide. The smooth-faced boy was younger than Maelen by at least ten years. He joined the chaos warriors and surveyed Maelen's men in disgust.

"Command, the heretics have be surrounded. My men are surrendering," Maelen whispered. "One of them's in an ultramarine's uniform."

"I'm not a heretic, captain," Afennor said, "we think the Alpha Legion jammed your network. Believe me though, if the Lamenters knew they were dressed as Lamenters then we might have been more cautious. Unfortunately, command couldn't get word out that the space marines were joining you." Now that Afennor had come to think of it, the signal had been sent from one of the thunderhawks in the landing cave.

'The Alpha Legion must have been the ones who summoned us in the first place,' Afennor thought.

"Captain," said Brother Tychel to Brother-captain Myrmidon, "two of our battle brothers were slain. But I do not recommend we compound the Alpha Legion's trickery by slaying these men. They were only misguided."

"So…" the PDF captain gurgled, "you're all REAL Lamenters?"

"Yes," came several answers.

"I agree brother," Myrmidon answered. "Everyone else, form tight up. Remember, we're the only ones of the Emperor's faithful space marines down here. Men of the PDF, do not be hard on yourselves. Your network was jammed, you couldn't have known we were here. Now, onward to the cave…"

A boltgun's shout caused everyone to jump. Afennor twirled around, bring his rife to bear on the source of the sound. He relaxed upon seeing it. Captain Maelen lay against a wall, smoking bolter in hand pointing up at his head. The remains of his head smeared the stone above him.

…

From above the hive, Slaesh watched for signs of activity from below. The bombing of Terra had stopped at long last, no doubt the bombs had been depleted. Daemonic fire still rolled out across the land like an ocean, but no new bombs fell and the three stolen Lamenter thunderhawks that they Alpha Legion had arrived in could hover above their victim with impunity.

"How much longer will Vashuss take?" asked Cobros from beside him, rubbing his chin with a yellow-armored gauntlet. Slaesh didn't anwer, knowing only that their mission was of great importance. The powers of chaos would corrupt that generator, whether by the original plan or by another brilliant improvisation from Vashuss.

…

"The cave of freedom lies just past this wall," Captain Myrmidon whispered as the party slipped up to a tall indoor cliff that lay at the end of a dizzying block of military blocks. "Now, the gate requires a special…" The captain silenced himself as the party discovered the tiny door to the titanic wall.

For all the cliff's size, the door was barely big enough for an Astartes to squeeze through and incredibly unremarkable. It presently lay on the ground: smashed by a tremendous force that crumpled its plasteel body. The Lamenters rushed through, bolters raised, PDF troops following behind them. Afennor was the last one through. The cold silence that filled the air was just a hint as to the devastation Afennor discovered inside.

They stood on a wide road that led to the mouth of a cave on the far wall. Flanking the entrance to the cave were two round bunkers. A field of technological ruin lay in a messy carpet across the floor: the remains of automated defense turrets and other assortments of mechanical defenses. Here and there, a fallen servitor lay: ripped apart by bolterfire.

"Fast!" the captain shouted to the PDF. The PDF now took the lead, sprinting to the mouth of the cave that yawned open before them. The darkness of the cave, compounded with knowing that chaos might lie in wait within was a terror that could not compare to the desperation of the moment. Even the cowards of the PDF went in with the determination of a commissar. Behind them, the Lamenters took the rear. There was no time to check for booby traps.

It took a minute to pass anything within the cave except bleak rockrete tunnel. For a moment, Afennor wondered if this was a simple tube and not the cavern he had imagined. But it was not so, for they emerged into a cavern of such size that Afennor could imagine a small town being erected within. But for all its splendorous size, the cave carried a single occupant: a squat bunker with a single way in.

"Secure the cave!" Myrmidon yelled to the PDF. "Lamenters, to the bunker, NOW!" Afennor scanned the bunker through the scope of his rifle and saw no murder-holes nor slits for the use of defenders within. It was more of a turtle's shell than the walls of a keep. The Lamenters paused at the doorway.

"Brothers, initiate attack protocol seven," Myrmidon ordered his men, "scout, in first!" Afennor did not think of himself when he rushed inside. He raised his rifle and saw nothing as he slid through the narrow hallway and stormed down the short flight of dusty stairs at the end of it. He stopped when he reached the bottom, prompting those behind him to stop.

He saw a circular chamber. In the middle was a hideously complex device of arcane technology as large as a battle tank. It could only have been the generator. An axe that bore runes of Khorne was driven into the side of it. Sitting before the generator was a lonely chaos space marine, dressed in true Alpha Legion colours and without a helmet. His eyes were closed but opened as Afennor took his shot.

The Alpha Legion marine dodged Afennor's shot, practically teleporting to the wall. His eyes burned solid red with the power of the warp. Smoke billowed from his armor and his skin shifted in the manner of disturbed water with the subtly of a well-told lie.

"Afennor Zodan!" laughed the Alpha Legion warrior. Afennor recognized Vashuss' lieutenant: Paskatera. It was his axe in the generator. 'It must be a daemon weapon,' Afennor thought as he prepared to take his next shot, shifting aside so the men behind him could engage the traitor.

Leering daemonically, Paskatera breathed red fire into the face of the first Lamenter. The brother shrieked a dying choke as the flames washed over him, melting the paint on his suit. His eyepieces burst while flame issued from them. He hit the floor, allowing the next man to push in. Paskatera was upon the second man in a second, his gauntlets warping and growing into talons. Afennor ran to the generator and gave the axe a pull. An invisible force hurled him back just as Paskatera's daemonic claws finished the second battle-brother. Afennor fumbled for his rifle when the daemonically-infused monster turned to face him, glowing eyes firmly fixed onto his prey.

"You will not escape us again!" Paskatera's distorted voice growled as horns wriggled forth from his brow.

"The Emperor's judgement is upon you, daemon!" Myrmidon bellowed with a thrust of his power sword. The tip of the blade erupted from Paskatera's chest, illuminating the twisted man's black blood that dribbled down his greenish armor from the blow.

"The Emperor will die. Chaos eternal. Hydra dominatus!" Paskatera roared. He twisted around, too fast for the eye to follow, and took Myrmidon's head in both hands. Afennor raised his rifle just as Paskatera took a glance behind him.

"You're not Vashuss, but you work anyways," the ultramarine scout hissed. The rifle's cracking pop filled the room. One of those eyes went out like a candle. The other flickered and was extinguished. With a crash, the chaos space marine toppled to the floor, at last slain. His dead face wore angry surprise.

"We're too late," Myrmidon cursed as he rushed over the body. The chamber filled with Lamenters but none did anything to the axe or the generator. "The chaos gods gave their unholy blessings to that heretic as a reward for this wicked deed." He shook his head. "We have failed. The shield is corrupted by chaos. Quickly, leave here."

"Your welcome," mumbled Afennor as they rushed upstairs and back into the cave.

"Command," Myrmidon said into his earpiece upon emerging into the cavern, "we need inquisitorial personnale down here now. The generator is corrupted by chaos…no commander, I am still in the hive." The captain paused. "Did any of you notice problems with your vox network?" he asked them, "it was apparently jammed again for a brief moment." No one had tried to use the network. "What?" Myrmidon asked in soft outrage, "what?" Afennor's hearts began to hasten. Paskatera was dead, but where were the other heretics? "And you just let them walk by?"

"Captain, what has happened?" one Lamenter asked. Myrmidon held up a hand as he listened to the reply.

"How did they get past security?" A pause came from Myrmidon. "Check all offices and hangars for listening beacons. There's no way the heretics could have known about those passwords and measures unless they were spying on us." Silence. The captain's eyes flared in horror. "What? Where are they now…" Myrmidon paused. "Someone must be shot for this. Myrmidon out." He turned off his earpiece, then pulled it off his head and shook his head.

"Captain?"

"They took our thunderhawks," Myrmidon mumbled, "They came up from the hive impersonating us, got past security, walked into our thunderhawks and flew away." A shudder of outrage shook the Lamenters. "We were their escape plan. Now the corrupt shields could threaten the entire island."


	42. Glorious Tomorrow

On the bridge of his flagship, Abaddon nodded approvingly to Vashuss, who had changed out of that Lamenter suit and back into his true colours.

"The shield will be ours soon," Vashuss promised. "If they destroy the generator, we can simply attack. If they leave it be, it is all the better." Abaddon looked out across his midnight-coloured daemon world. Beside it, Terra lay largely in flames. The daemonic fire brought by his bombs still burned. It was not like mortal fire but an immortal, unstoppable blaze that would help light the way to his final victory.

"Redeploy your forces at once, Vashuss. The faithful legions will focus on Camlan. But I will focus my attack elsewhere," Abaddon stated. With a wave of his talon, the despoiler dismissed Vashuss from the bridge. After the Alpha Legion's lord had left him alone, Abaddon took a moment to regard his armada of warships. There they waited, the eight-pointed stat hanging from their hulls, their cargo spaces filled with yet more legions of chaos. Amidst them were warships from nearby sectors who'd defeated the Imperials facing them and had now made the pilgrimage to his side. Abaddon's forces were swelling.

Moving to the controls, he contacted his troops.

"Lord Moloch," Abaddon demanded over the controls of his bridge's communicator.

"Yes my lord?" thundered the anwer from a Black Legion champion.

"The Black Legion shall once again tread upon Terra. Prepare my strike force to land. It is time I joined the fray."

…

"You used to be a prisoner of the Alpha Legion?" Myrmidon asked in amazement while the shuttle swept through the cold air. The world, cringing under the long dark shadow of the Despoiler's invasion, hiding from his cold conquering stare, showed them nothing through the windows but a wall of fire. Looking outside was looking into the deepest of hell's dungeons. But this was Holy Terra! How could the Emperor's will have allowed such destruction unleashed onto the innocent population, who's numbers now dried with the heat of the flames. It was best not to look outside at the abyss of orange light that danced outside and not just simply because it stung the eyes.

"I escaped," Afennor mumbled, dreading the question as much as he dreaded the meaningless destruction that they passed with the placidity of a breeze. A gust of wind shook the cab. The indominable hull of the thunderhawk was unaffected by turbulence: just another reminder of what they flew in. Afennor regained his steady posture in the small seat. His Astartes bulk shrank the chair considerably. Barely five years ago, this would have been confortable.

"How?" The whole cabin was asking him even if Myrmidon had been the one that spoke. Every Lamenter face was fixed on him. He didn't want to say anything.

"How?" asked the captain again, "young scout, I pray you do not act this way towards your superiors within the Ultramarines."

"I was being held in a dungeon in their flagship. Their lord, Vashuss, asked me a few questions…" he shrugged. "I didn't tell him anything. Afterwards, the Alpha Legion departed for wherever they were heading and I was left hanging by my feet from the ceiling." The look on Myrmidon's face demanded more. "They commenced their landings and I was put into a smaller craft, along with my gear, and they were going to take me to their daemon world." The captain's nodded and leaned forward, eagerly awaiting more. Could he ready Afennor's mind? How did he know there was more?

"Vashsus tortured me," Afennor timidly admitted, "his snakes and their electric jaws. Scars all across my chest."

"But how did you escape?" demanded Myrmidon. By the Emperor, he couldn't speak! Afennor swallowed his uneasiness. He'd have to lie, there was no other way.

"The ship I was in, the Holy Fleet shot it down while it soared to the daemon world. It crashed on Terra and I salvaged my gear from the ruins," Afennor lied. His hearts grew tight and he prepared to defend himself.

"Are you sure?" Myrmidon gave the look a lawyer gave to the accused.

"Unless some other means brought the transport down. I am sorry brother-captain, but the experience…not something I want to see again. But the heretics did not taint me, the monastery already examined my soul." This, at least, was true. Myrmidon grew calm and so did Afennor.

"Alright," Myrmidon replied, "you looked uneasy there." Afennor gave a mock smile and looked out the window: better than looking at Myrmidon. The towers of genocidal flames were preferable to looking at Myrmidon for amother moment.

No one could know Afennor's secret. No one.

…

"Sir! The Black Legion is advancing on our outer wall!"

Lord Commander Atlas leaned down to analyze the data slate. The whole room went silent, no one daring to believe the Black Legion had gotten so far already. The shields defending the palace were still up. But this wall, like the brittle shell of a snail, was all that defended the Emperor's mighty house. One did not need to see the map of Terra on the wall of the command bunker to know the war was rapidly being lost. The grim faces of the frenzied PDF staff was indication enough.

"Emperor's light…" Atlas whispered. "They get past the wall…it must hold." He looked over the troop roster. Fifty thousand men garrisoned the emplacements that defended the palace. Thousands of men, thousands of guns, standing as eternall wardens atop their fighting platforms, even now spending their blood to hold back the inevitable advance of Abaddon's legions. "We can't stop them," he whispered too loudly. He looked up at his attendant. "Fortify the palace. By the Emperor, we will defend him directly."

"What of the outer wall? The first line of defense the palace has?" the attendant asked. Atlas shook his head.

"The Emperor watch over their souls."

…

"That the Black Legion?" cried Anton from atop the artillery tower, lorded as it was over the multi-tiered wall of thick plasteel. Anton's voice was all but lost behind the roar of the many cannon that spiked out from the great walls. Lascannons atop towers like the one he stood on fired over and over at the chaos horde. "HOW CAN THERE BE SO MANY OF THEM?"

Indeed, the very sight of the black flood that marched upon the walls through the twisted wreck of the city numbered in the high thousands, not counting their rolling tanks and swooping fighters overhead. With seething daemons around them, whose desription would drive mortals mad. The chaos force advanced without pause, shells exploding around them. A mortal would be consumed by this artillery, but the powers of chaos absorbed the punishing bombardment. To Anton, the artillery shells exploded into tiny sparks when they neared their target, by the will of the Dark Gods. A black smoke floated off the army, polluting the very air around them. So thick was the cloud that Anton could not see the ruins behind them. His forces would be buried by it! Yet, for all their mighty power, this was only the innermost circle of the endless tide that formed a living wall of heretics that lay parallel to Anton's wall. For each chaos space marine, there were one thousand heretics and mutants. For all the invincible power of the seemingly infinite wall that bristled with defenders, chaos clearly had the overwhelming advantage. Chaos artillery exploded amongst the defenders, spraying bright blood and wet corpses in all directions with each soul-numbing blast. Gunfire made sport of the troopers. Only when they closed the distance and began to scale the walls with crude ladders, did the chaos bombardment stop. The Black Legion held position, but the daemons and heretics washed forward. Abaddon had to be down there somewhere: a very beacon of the Dark God's power.

It wasn't fair.

Desperate guardsmen fought to the death against the overwhelming force. The terrible inevitability of the defeat that would leave the Imperial Palace naked to Abaddon was too awful to even consider.

"They've reached the first rampart!" yelled colonel Seb within earshot of Anton.

"Throw all we've got at them! For the Emp…" Anton could not finish before a helltalon dropped a bomb into their midst.

…

"Em…Em…Emperor! Help!" a dying man shrieked from his stretcher.

"Medic!" The cry came from all directions from many throats. Manar couldn't keep up with all of it. Too many wounded! Too many dying men!

"Medic!"

"I'm busy!" Manar yelled, ducking down as a chaos bomber flew overhead. The exposed rampart of the topmost tower: what an awful place for a field hospital. The enemy was right below them. What was worse, Manar was the only field doctor in the whole regiment who hadn't been lost.

"You'll be alright, boy," she promised the young man she tended to. "Chal! Get me some anti-septic! This one's got a really bad GSW!" She held her hands over the bullet hole in his chest.

"MEDIC!" An explosion rocked the wall.

"Quiet!" Manar shouted as another chaos bomber flew overhead, dropping its payload down onto the other side of the wall. The whole world turned orange for one heartbeat. The heat from the distant blast singed her skin. Others got worse.

"Oh my god! Medic! Medic!"

"My eyes! MEDIC!"

'Shut up,' she thought as her eyes grew wet. She hurried to finish with this man. 'Leave me be.' She felt herself shaking. "Stop getting hurt!" she yelled "stop! Stop! STOP!"

"Before I left, she makes me stand

From her palm, a blossom to my hand

From her eyes, I hide my pain…"

The man she was tending to was whispering, a song by the sound of it. Manar knew the tune, having heard it through the walls of the PDF barracks many times. It was called Glorious Tomorrow. This man's faint voice didn't hold the tune well. She joined in, perhaps to calm herself or to calm him.

"I lie to her, that I'll see her again

With other men, other recruits,

We leave behind us all our fruits"

She spoke the lyrics in unison with him as loud as she could while she worked, even if it was more of a man's song.

"Though my feet are made of clay

I kiss her lips

I release her hips

Her blossom in my hand I turn about and march away"

"Glorious…" the dying man rasped for seven seconds: the amount of time it took to sing this one-word part of the song. It sounded more like a dying grox.

"Glorious!" Manar sang. "Oh Glorious!"

"GLOOOORIOUS!" rang the seven second word from a number of nearby soldiers, whose wounds did not cripple them to the point of death. "TOOOOMORRROW!" Over the shrieks of "medic!" more men were taking up the tune to drown out the pain.

…

"Fight!" the commissar roared. "Fight!" he prepared to shoot the first coward PDF on this tier that showed signs of cowardice. He glanced around, up and down the ranks of the troops who held this high-up level of the wall. Was someone singing Glorious Tomorrow? He saw, nearby, a pair of men were doing so. It was only then, the commissar realized that they were not alone.

"For tomorrow! A future I ensure

For tomorrow! A lifetime I endure

Far away, far from compassion's care

Oh! The shells! Exploding in the air

Far away, far from mercy's door"

With every word, it seemed, more men who held the wall. Hundreds of voices every second took up the words. The commissar turned to the major and saw, through the five meters of space between the two men, that the major too was singing as he scanned the lower tiers through his magnoculars.

"Beneath Emperor's eyes, I battle his war

I take His light, shone from the sun's ray

I listen to what commander has to say

I hold my gun

I feel the sun

Blossoms over me, I fight to save the coming day

"

The commissar saw two of his brother commissars running towards him.

"Come, let us inspire the men," one of them said as the two of them mounted an ammunition crate, standing on it like a stage and rising over the heads of the troops, almost all of whom had joined in. If everyone who heard the song was joining in its singing, the whole tier could be singing it. Thousands of voices. The commissar joined the other two and raised his megaphone to his lips as the song's simple chorus came.

"GLORIOUS!

OH GLORIOUS!

GLORIOUS!

TOMORROW!"

Those on the higher wall were heard by those on the wall below them. Like wildfire, others joined in. There were so few orders to give, beyond "shoot!" that there was little else to do with one's voice.

For tomorrow! A baby I will save

For tomorrow! A nightmare I will brave

The Emperor, to whom blood is gift

Underneath his gaze I feel spirits lift

And I am called by His behest

I say goodbye

A painless die

And so I hit the ground, a bright red blossom on my chest

GLORIOUS!

OH GLORIOUS!  
GLORIOUS !

TOMORROW!"

No longer were they a dying grox. The thunder of tens of thousands of voices was audible through the gunfire. Was the whole wall singing it? Unlikely, but it wasn't too big a stretch of the imagination. And atop the tallest tier, the three commissars remained, leading the song from atop the box, raising their hands to encourage louder voices. Leaping explosions from chaos bombs ironically lended greater strength to the voices. The bold yellow of their leaping flames, jumping upwards while thirty thousand men sang "glorious" was truly worthy of the word, like the battle itself had joined in the song.

"ETERNITY, IN AFTERLIFE, I SEE ANCESTORS THERE!

A TRILLION MEN AT HIS SIDE, I SEE HIS GLORY BARE!

HE SMILES AT ME: A FAITHFUL ELITE

FOREVER HERE!

I FEEL NO FEAR!

AND SO I TAKE MY PLACE AND LAY MY BLOSSOM AT HIS FEET!

GLORIOUS!

OH GLORIOUS!  
GLORIOUS !

TOMORROW!"

Alas, it was only a song. And though the PDF carried legendary defiance within their resolute resistance and iron spirit, it was still Abaddon's finest who lead the attack.

And so with the fiery blossom of Imperial faith stenciled into their souls, the PDF prepared to be martyred at the wall.


	43. Khan's Pathway

There was little beauty in death. As was obvious, death was the final step in a life of beauty and wonders. There could be no more experience following death. Like the closing of a book or the setting of a sun, it brought darkness to light and oblivion to action. It didn't take an eldar mind as fermented as his to understand that what he beheld before him was only a refuse of death, the sweet nectar of its flower, an unrelated product of its existance.

Yet, for its origins were dark, the rainbow of crystalline beauty that hovered about the ceiling of the chamber like a frozen rain of multicoloured drops, was a rare sight even for one like Asurmen. The sight of millions of spiritstones hovering in the breast of the craftworld, each individual eldritch device bound upon the empty air with the magic of eldar technology, was as beautiful as it was grim. Each of these carved droplets had been carried by an eldar soldier whose flesh and gear and lengthy training had failed them in the fight against chaos. Casualties mounted and this vast heart would grow fuller. Watching the swirling clouds of glassy colour overhead, Asurmen speculated how much more beauty this chamber could hold before it had the entire race inside its deeps.

'All our warriors,' Asurmen thought, 'soon, to be here. How few warriors do we have left?' he could feel the thick air's energy, pulsing with the force of the collected souls. 'How few eldar are left?' From what Asurmen knew, there were fewer than one thousand. It was as the prophecy had foretold. This final battle against chaos was exsanguinating the race. There was little sadness to the knowledge. Like death, it was a cold inevitability that was assured as soon as the first eldar drew breath. He swore though, if the eldar were to fail then the galaxy would not. These souls deserved the peace of death and not the cruel ravages of the chaos gods. The battle on Terra must be won.

"I swear to Khaine, we shall do all we can," Asurmen promised the empty room, releasing a spiritstone of one of the last Dire Avenger exarchs into the air. Like a balloon, it drifted up into the clouds amidst the ceiling to become yet another spectacular droplet.

Asurmen turned his head to the hooded figure alongside him, stared him in his masked face and pointed a finger at his robed chest.

"Terra has all but fallen to Abaddon. I must stay here to guard the craftworlds. Why must Fuegan stand alone?" Asurmen asked the speechless figure. He did not expect an answer: he knew the figure could not speak anything to him yet. "The farseers who live cannot see what will come. How can Fuegan fight for us alone? The humans do not know how to battle chaos." Still the figure said nothing. Asurmen knew better than to get mad with his silence. He turned back to the cloud of stones overhead.

"The hand of Asuryan crushed by the hand of Asuryan," he spoke to the nothingness around him. "The burning lance obliterated by the burning lance. That is what the prophecy says and it has not failed us so far." He no longer had anyone to talk to. "If I die," Asurmen swore, 'it will be in here, defending them." He bowed to the spirits before him.

…

Hope was a cruel thing. It built up a man's spirit anew so it could be rended to oblivion once more. It was dying twice. It was worse than outright end.

Sitting inside the monastery, Afennor caught a rare glimpse of peace as he sat cross-legged in a shaped reflection cast down by a window. The grime from today's fighting was splayed across his face along with the blood of the last mutant he'd beheaded. His rifle lay in the corner, empty, in need of new shots and more oil to appease the machine spirit. Through the walls, the sound of desperate streetfighitng tickled his ears. Through it all, the ethereal screams of daemons stood out like a canker upon the sole.

There had been no hope before Guilliman had stood up again in the body of the Black Tomb. When the primarch had stood in his new form and Dorn had torn down Perturabo, there was hope. Alas, with the Black Tomb battling in the street, he had been absorbed by the fighting and reduced to yet another soldier in this months-long shootout. And now, as Abaddon's victories piled high, news of his advance to the perimeter of the Imperial palace was still stinging his mind. How could they lose? Why could Abaddon summon so many daemons onto Terra? Where were the other Astartes? Where were the other primarchs?! The list of damnable truths stacked ever higher against them until it wearied the mind and drained the soul to know them all.

'How much longer must this test endure?' Afennor thought. 'Why does it have to be this way?' For his whole life he'd believed in the power of the Emperor. Now, as chaos sunk its fangs into Terra…

'Why did Guilliman have to rise up?' Afennor thought in dread. 'Why did he have to give us false hope?'

Before he could sink deeper into despair, he reminded himself of one thing. Though hope, as fickle as it was, had betrayed him now, it had delivered him from the Alpha Legion. His mind drifted back to the day he escaped: the day he would forever keep to himself.

Then he remembered being lowered down from his position from the ceiling. He remembered being shackled like a beast and led by an iron collar from the depths of the ship and onto a landing craft. From there, under the escort of two marines, he was taken to that great ugly ship where he was delivered like a package to that team of Iron Warriors and their warsmith. He had been told by the warsmith that his blood would fuel the man's diabolical sorcery and twist it into a foul rite of chaos. A blood sacrifice in the name of the dark gods: the worst fate imaginable.

But he had escaped none-the-less, once he was on the planet, he had gotten away…

'No,' Afennor thought. 'Don't muse on the past. I used my miracle, I must go this war without.' He stood back up and retrieved his sniper rifle. Outside, the voices of daemons called to him. With the determination of a much older man, Afennor left his place of rest to once again bring death to the enemy, even if there was no hope.

…

The battle barge exploded forth from the warp in a hail of debris. It was not its own wreckage that came forth with the ship, but the wreckage of a broken spacehulk that had been trapped in the warp for aeons. Evasive manuvers kept the barge from dashing itself apart upon the debris. A quick inspection of the surrounding space showed his eyes more rifts in the warp. Space itself was bleeding and from it he could see chunks of wrecked space ship being surrendered forth.

"We've made it brother-captain," said brother Kale.

"Prepare the thunderhawk," replied Usoran. "Emperor be praised we've arrived…" his voice turned to stone and the words fell heavily to the floor as the screen showed a magnification of Holy Terra, still tens of thousands of miles away. Upon the bridge's window, in sight of the whole Dark Angel's company, she burned with only a few islands of sanctity in an ocean of inferno. Like swarming gnats, the fleets of chaos assaulted her surface continuously. Most terrifying of all was the daemon world that floated over the tortured planet: jet black and featureless.

"Emperor…no,"

"Imperium forever. Please, don't let it be so."

"Have we lost?"

"NO!" Usoran shouted, his own mind still recovering from the stunning shock. "NO! We have not lost! Terra is in danger and we must fight alongside out brothers." He turned to the master serf. "Prepare my thunderhawk. Take us in, for the Emperor!" Alongside him, the Space Wolf ships emerged from the warp. No doubt the same scene played out on their ships too.

The two ships moved forward but there was a grave problem. The swarming fleets of chaos, not to mention the planet, offered them no angle to approach Terra by. Even Usoran could see it and the master serf confirmed it. Hurrying thorugh the assembled Dark Angels, the captain pointed to Terra and explained the obvious problem.

"And how will we know where to land?" he added. "We can't touch down without…" he put a hand to his earpiece. "What?" He paused and listened to the report, then looked back to Usoran. "We're receiving a message from Terra and an odd signal. Like a chain of electric waves that connects us to some source of energy emissions on Terra." Usoran flinched and he quicly dismissed his troops. Only when the bridge was clean did he inquire further.

"What?" he asked.

"It appears to be a beacon of some kind, but of a much older pattern than anything I've ever seen," the master serf said, listening to the signal on his earpiece. "It is an ancient device indeed."

"It must be our brothers, calling us down. You said the signal formed a chain. Follow the chain, it must lead through a blind spot in the chaos fleet," Usoran insisted. "You said it came with a message. Display it." The serf nodded and patched the request through. Moments later, the bridge filled with the dry voice of an ancient man. His accent was familiar to Usoran. He'd heard it in the mouth of a space marine he'd once met.

[i] By the time you receive this, I shall be dead. [/i] the voice spoke. [i]But if the river's current has brought you here and the winds have blown true, then all is as predicted and Terra is falling to chaos. Though I am dying now and will not be able to warn the Imperium of chaos' coming victory, I have the strength yet in me to instruct you, young horseman, of this. Whoever you are and in whatever steed you ride, you may find safety if you follow the signal that my fallen horse is emitting to you from her bones. Follow the chain and you will get through the chaos fleet. Follow the chain and you shall find the wreckage of my slain horse, released at last from the warp, in total safety amidst Imperial hands. May your blade remain keen and your horse never tire.[/i] The serf looked puzzled.

"That sounded like a Mundus Planus accent, home of the White Sca…"

"I know," interrupted Usoran, deep in thought. [i]the primarchs are returning[/i]

"Brother-captain?"

"Take us in," Usoran replied, "follow his directions to the letter. To the very letter, serf. All our hope rests in fate's hands." With the Space Wolf barge in tow, the Dark Angels soared towards Terra, following the mysterious signal.

…

"Hydra Dominatus! Hahaha!" Vashuss' bolter blasted another PDF guardsmen into ribbons. He swung it around to take a roaring officer through the throat with a spray of bolts. Around him, the surviving troopers fled his onslaught, praying to their dying Emperor that Vashuss' tendrils would not find them as it had with half of the platoon. From the trenches they fled, sprinting towards the dugouts and bunkers that covered the top of this part of the manmade plateau that stood atop the hive.

It was such a strange thing that could only be found on Terra. A network of trenches and connected bunkers atop the flat top of a towering hive. The trenches reminded Vashuss of the ones he'd seen on Vraks, a long long time ago, but set into the solid structure of a manmade structure in place of shell-tortured ground.

"To me!" hissed Vashuss to the other legionaires, "the gun is nearby!" Around him, the twenty troopers of the Alpha Legion pressed in around him, each eye watching the trenches around them, which were now depleted of living Imperials.

"My lord, they are fortifying the gun emplacement," warned one of his troopers: Vashuss did not know which. This cell of faithful had a habit of sharing their armor, so not even he knew who wore what. "I saw them squeezing their way into the bunkers that encircle the gun's platform. To rush it would be suicide." Vashuss nodded, knowing there was fifty meters of solid structure beneath his feet. He would not simply enter the hive and approach the gun from below, otherwise these trenches would not exist.

"It shall not be a problem then," Vashuss replied with a sly smile, hidden beneath his rebreather. He had hoped for a good honest fight. These PDF, however, were so weak, so very weak. He often wished they were stronger. "Cobros, hail the Black Legion and inform them that the corridore to Camlan will be open soon." Vashuss flinched as he was abruptly cut off by the sound of a crash, like a falling shell. His momentary alarm was unneeded: he knew what it was that had landed nearby. Looking up over the trenches, Vashuss sighted a chunk of ancient starship, smoking in the remains of the bunker it had flattened. Bits of starship were falling like rain over Terra, both from the fighting in the stars overhead and from the debris the warp rifts around Terra were spitting out. There was another one nearby, lying in the center of the hive's plateau. To Vashuss, it looked like a piece of marble the size of a house, jagged, laden with rivets. It must have been the bridge of a starship, thought its design was nothing modern, but a relic from the past.

It was emblazoned with the White Scars insignia.

"Alpha Legion, head this way," Vashuss hissed, "and keep your eyes open for that damned Ultramarine…" His voice once again faded beneath a loud crashing noise. But this was not generated by an impact, but by an engine. Raising his head to look up at what it might be, Vashuss spotted the problem: a Dark Angels thunderhawk, pressing down beside the pale chunk of starship.

"It's about time," mumbled Vashuss. He contacted another cell, nearby. In a coded message, he contacted them.

- .... .. ... / .. ... / ...- .- ... .... ..- ... ... ---... / -.. .- .-. -.- / .- -. --. . .-.. ... / ... .. --. .... - . -.. .-.-.- / ... .... --- --- - / -.. --- .-- -. / - .... .- - / - .... ..- -. -.. . .-. .... .- .-- -.- .-.-.- / -... . / -.-. .- .-. . ..-. ..- .-.. .-.-.-

…

The hatch yawned open and Usoran's squad rained out. Looking out across the trenches, Usoran spotted many signs of battle: scorched rockrete, bodies and craters. Beautiful Terra…

The sound of sighting caught his attention. It came from the distant west. Lying to his east, within range of his bolter, lay a plateau of iron, mounted by the largest defense laser he had ever seen. It was defended by a rough wall of rockrete bunkers. Usoran was not given another moment to think.

The thunderhawk behind him exploded into a flaming oblivion. His ears hurt. He was falling.

"Captain?"

The dizziness was so overpowering. He heard someone stumble past him. And then there he was, in a canyon or a…no, not a canyon, a trench…

"Usoran, speak to me…"

Usoran came to his senses. He had been blown through the air by the force of his exploding thunderhawk. Bits of burning shrapnel lay around him. He could hear the distant chatter of bolterfire. He had little time to pray for his brothers or reflect on the lost machine. Battle lifted his senses and his logic bade him stand. A weaker man would have been killed but Usoran needed only spit out a mouthful of blood and check his flawless armor for cracks.

"Usoran?" begged Odeen's voice in his earpiece.

"I'm fine," Usoran told the Space Wolves, who were still in his ship. "Cover the air. Chaos is right on top of us." Thinking on his feet, Usoran checked the empty trench for survivors. As much as he would have liked to check his thunderhawk, he knew it would explose him. Blast: what had destroyed it?

"Captain?" A Dark Angel joined him. "Sir the enemy is concentrated west of us. PDF troops fight to hold chaos back. But this part of the network has been infiltrated by fallen battle-brothers. The Alpha Legion!" Usoran shuddered, eyeing the Dark Angel. The Alpha Legion was known to dress themselves in loyalist armor and this Dark Angel knew a lot. Of course, Usoran knew this man by his voice. It was Brother Mackenzie Zye, veteran of three campaign with him.

"Brother Zye," Usoran instructed, "where are the others?"

"We ran into an Alpha Legion warrior three trenches to the left of this one. Lorenzo and Korre have made contact with the PDF colonel." Usoran shook his head. How long had he been dazed?

"What about the signal…"

"Sir, behind you!"

Usoran snapped around and brought his bolter to bear on a shorter man than him. He wore the colours of an Ultramarine scout and was young in the face.

"Afennor?" Usoran pulled the name from deep within his memory. The scout, who was slinking by, jumped in shock, noticing the two marines for the first time. Usoran lowered his bolter and narrowed his eyes. "The Emperor's will is curious indeed, that we should meet by accident, twice." The wild, hate-filled look in Afennor's face almost made Usoran go on the defensive.

"Vashuss is here," Afennor said, "I'm killing him. I will shoot him dead and give his head to Guilliman. You can help if you want." Afennor pushed past them and continued down the trench, leaving Usoran speechless.

"Vashuss is the lord of the Alpha Legion," Machenzie remarked.

"I'm going after the scout. Rally to the others and I will be with you when I am done with the young one," Usoran promised, passing his battle-brother to collect Afennor. No doubt the scout had been here longer than he had. His words would brief Usoran of the situation here. He caught up with the vengeful scout down the trenches, crouching by him and hurrying to keep up.

"Afennor Zodan is it?" Usoran asked, "what has happened?"

"We've been here, fighting alone, for many many MANY months," Afennor whispered sharply. "The Lamenters are gone, Usoran. Gone. Destroyed. Wiped out. Vashuss and his men defiled their equipment. He wore their armor to disguise himself, flew their ships to get past out guns. He has heaped crimes upon the Adeptus Astartes. I don't care if it kills me. I am going to kill him." His voice stunk of weak hate, the kind that drove men to madness. Usoran prepared to raise his voice to warn the young scout against his actions.

"…SIR…!" screamed Mackenzie's voice in Usoran's ear. "…HELP…!" Usoran turned around, stopping Afennor where he was.

"Quickly!" Usoran cried, charging back the way he came, Afennor close behind.

"How did Vashuss get behind us?" Afennor asked in a hot whisper. Usoran turned the corner in time to behold a damnable sight. It was Mackenzie, dead on the floor, his head in the claws of a helmetless traitor in scaled armor. It could only be Vashuss himself: Afennor had said so. But how did Afennor know?

Usoran raised his bolter, sighting the warrior carefully. Afennor was quicker, leaping in front of Usoran and raising his rifle, took a shot. Over Afennor's shoulder, he saw the shot fly wide. But Vashuss had already turned to them. He knew they were there. His cybernetic serpents were upon them in moments. Afennor flew back and his rifle flew in another direction: hurled through the air and clattering down behind him. Another serpent lashed its teeth into Usoran's bolter, tearing its metal and killing its machine spirit. Try as me might, the gun would not shoot. He let it go and drew the Lion Sword.

The sight of the blade widened Vashuss' eyes. He withdrew his snakes and drew a lithe gladius from his belt.

"Where did you get that sword?" the lord of chaos demanded, his lashing tone sounded offended from behind his rebreather.

"From the hands of a traitor like you," Usoran replied. "Its blade yearns to taste the flesh of the heretic again."

"It will not on this day," Vashuss answered coldly. He drew back in a gesture that Usoran knew as fear. "That power mustn't be wasted Dark Angel." Afennor stood up as Vashuss held out his hand in a gesture of companionship. "Join me…Usoran." He must have been listening to their vox chatter. To hear him speak it was like watching a sickly cultist of Nurgle drink from a holy chalice. "Join the winning side. There can be no shame in taking the path I have."

"Never!" spat Usoran, "I will never fight for chaos. How can a man with geneseed even consider giving the galaxy over to the warp as you do?" Without warning, Usoran lunged at the traitor. Vashuss' tendrils whipped down on him from above, but all were parried by the Lion Sword. He brought his blade around to parry the gladius.

Their blades lashing, Vashuss and Usoran battled, Usoran pressing the lord of chaos backwards with every step. Their five second duel ended when the air turned orange and the world drowned in sound. An explosion split reality apart and once again, Usoran was dazed. He regained his composure just in the nick of time. The sweeping gladius stopped inches from his face, Vashuss standing over him mockingly.

"If you want to continue resisting chaos then you will know an eternity of unending torment," Vashuss snarled. "You may yet come to your senses. Sacrifice your comrades and join me. All power demands sacrifice." He was gone before Usoran could come back to his feet to continue the fight. "Hydra Dominatus! Hahaha!" Usoran did not pursue him, knowing he could wander into an ambush.

Ten minutes later, the Space Wolves came down in their own thunderhawk. They reported seeing three Lamenters thunderhawks escaping the battlefield, to Usoran's frustration. He figured it out without being told.

Odeen stepped forth and gaped at the source of the explosion. The huge defense laser lay in flaming ruin: knocked out by the Alpha Legion. Odeen found Usoran by the piece of White Scars spaceship, wherein lay the beacon that had brought them here.

"Thank you, Great Khan," Usoran said, kissing the naked metal in tremendous respect.

"It might be dirty," Odeen warned.

"But it has shown us what we needed to see," Usoran replied. "Vashuss is trying to clear a path to Camlann."

"Camlan or Camlann?" Odeen asked. Usoran shrugged.

"It is an ancient name. They both fit," he replied. "Which now takes us to the issue of him." He pointed to Afennor, standing between two Dark Angels, hands bound. Odeen blinked in astonishment and Afennor passed him a weak smile. "Afennor, I want to know how you knew Vashuss was behind us." Usoran looked at the little scout with an inquisitor's stare. "Well? You mentioned him by name and gave no indication to where I was going." The sound of an approaching dreadnought did not weaken Usoran's interrogation. "How did you know?"

"I guessed," Afennor muttered.

"A lucky guess then. How did you escape the Alpha Legion?" Usoran continued, "their captivity almost broke Odeen. How did you survive, let alone get away?" Afennor put on a liar's face when he spoke.

"The Holy fleet shot down the ship I was held on. You see…" Usoran listened without interest to Afennor's lie.

"I know that is untrue," Usoran snapped. "Your face and tone betray it. How did you escape?"

"I…um…"

"Afennor," Usoran had never done this before. "Afennor, boy, did you escape or did they let you go?" Odeen frowned.

"Are you accusing him of heresy?" the Space Wolf asked. Usoran nodded.

"Did you join them?"

"No!" Afennor wasn't telling the whole truth. "I mean…no! Never! They asked me to join and I spat in their face. Why would I try to shoot Vashuss if I was with him?" His voice was shaking. "You believe me Odeen, you saw how much I hated Vashuss aboard their ship."

"Are you spying for them?" asked Usoran. "Did Vashuss tell you he was behind us? Why did you block my shot? Why are you lying to me? If you didn't join them Afennor, then why are you hiding something?" Usoran walked over to him and pulled his head in to his chest, exposing the surgical scar on the back of the scout's neck. "If you aren't lying then what is this?" he pinched the implant below Afennor's neck. He looked at Odeen, who was staring, wide eyed, elsewhere. So were the Dark Angels Afennor stood between. Usoran looked back down at the scout, who at last broke to Usoran.

"You'd never understand," Afennor said plainly. "You'd never understand! I know how we can stop chaos, but you just have to have faith in me! They're going to attack Camlan, the one point on all Terra where they can erect their tower to turn Terra to chaos. I can stop it."

The grind of a machine caught his attention. Usoran looked from Afennor to behold the Black Tomb, alive, standing over them. It was this machine that everyone was staring at. How was he still alive?

"It is a miracle. I heard it was lost to Vashuss," Odeen said. Usoran turned to Afennor to demand an explanation. The boy had fled, disappeared like a ghost while everyone was distracted.


	44. The Astartes Arrive

This time, his vison of the Lion sat him inside a small, humble dining room.

"A raven that could say 'nevermore' the last word of Corax, warned Spectros of chaos," Usoran said to the Lion. "You come to me as you do. Guilliman inhabits a dreadnought. Jaghadai Khan summons us to exactly the right spot from beyond death and Rogal Dorn's statue slays Perturabo. That's five miracles." Usoran looked across the table into his primarch's face. "That leaves four. Sanguinius, Vulkan, Leman Russ and Ferrus Manus." He held up four power-armored fingers and narrowed his space marine eyes, expecting the Lion to know how the others would come to his aid.

[i[Your genetic ancestors do what they can,[/i] the old angel replied, [i]but the primarchs cannot fight your battles for you. The heavens will not split open to unleash the furies of a celestial army to save you in your time of woe.[/i] Usoran nodded and crossed his boyish arms across his thin chest and clicked his sandals together.

"Where is Camlan?" asked little Usoran in his child's voice. The Lion smiled at the determination he saw in the child.

[i]I do not know,[/i] the Lion answered, [i]I know that wherever it is, it is tainted. A place where the fabric of the materium is tainted by chaos, inflicted by the deeds done there. In times of old, Camlan was where a father battled his son's traitor army, slew him and then died of his wounds. It is there where a tower may properly channel chaos into Terra.[/i]

"Why there? Why not the Emperor's palace?"

[i]It is where the Emperor is and his purity can stop chaos. Camlan is not as well guarded. Even with Abaddon advancing on the palace, he wil still not break it,[/i] the Lion said. [i]Camlan will rise into the air when the tower is built and the power of chaos will bring it to the Emperor's Palace.[/i]

"That would look funny," Usoran remarked.

[i]By then, Terra would be full of chaotic energy. The power of the Emperor will fade by it. When the evil of Camlan mixes with the purity of the Emperor, then the galaxy's fate will be sealed.[/i]

"So they will build a tower on Camlan to weaken the Emperor then bring it to his palace when he is weak to deliver the killing blow," Usoran said. "But won't our ships in orbit be able to shoot down a piece of flying rock?"

At that moment, the room winked away. Before him, Usoran beheld the sight of his darkest nightmares. The sight of the Imperial palace, beneath a burning sky. Upon its tip, crushing down on top of it, was a kilometer of flying rock, like a plate-shaped asteroid. Upon it was built a tower of black metal, which lay in the middle of a solid beam of red energy that pierced the sky. The rock, his gut knew, was Camlan. He watched the earth burn and break as the vile energy of chaos warped and twisted it. In his skeleton, he could feel Terra coming apart.

[i]Chaos has corrupted a void shield generator upon Terra[/i] the Lion's voice said. [i]Its corrupted shields are the playthings of chaos. They will defend the tower. By the time this moment that you see before you comes about, it will be too late to stop it. No attack from outside could breach the shield.[/i]

The vision came apart as the universe was devoured by the warp. Usoran heard the screams of one trillion souls in his ears and the laughs of four gods…

Usoran awoke in a sweat. He was sitting in the command bunker, the Lion's Sword across his lap.

"So that's what the final battle will be," he said to himself.

…

They emerged.

Exploding out, one after another, their long hulls battering aside lesser-sized chunks of floating space debris as easily as a hand sweeps a feather, the ships of the Adeptus Astartes cast forth from the warp. Decorated prows faced proudly down upon the ball of flame below them, writihing as it did in its invasion-induced torture. The heretical fleets silhouetted themselves against the glow of the burning world. And floating over it like a canker or a mocking twin, was Abaddon's own daemon world.

Their power was awesome and their ancient cannons were truly aimed. Battle barges from all the surviving space marine chapters who had not pursued Usoran were there in a holy gathering of Astartes naval might. The coloured hulls formed a collage of honour in the godless void. The blacks of the Black Templars were cast in a glaring contrast to the reddish Blood Angel ship that flew portside. The long nose of the White Scars barge challenged the bright colours that adorned the prow of the greenish Invaders ship. But all were barges of the space marines and each had come to deliver an army of salvation to the besieged capital.

Yet for all their might, they were only twenty ships in total, if escort frigates were counted. The shoal of barges was outnumbered sorely by those ships that were visible, ignoring the countless murders that still docked in sunless ports across that daemon world. As the Astartes barges made for Terra, following a mysterious beacon, many heretical ships tried to challenge the newcomers with their own hulls and guns. But these unfortunates were met with a hail of explosive death coughed out from the space-bourne homes of the Emperor's finest. Wreck after flaming wreck exploded and the space marine fleet continued along without delay. Landing craft and thunderhawks rained out from their cargo bays in thick swarms, falling like a gentle snow onto the tortured planet.

The rest of the Emperor's Finest had arrived.

Yet, for all the majesty the combined fleet had, Odeen was troubled when he hailed it from below. Someone was missing.

"Barge uh…" Odeen tried to read the name of the Black Templar's ship. He was never good with the names of strangers. Did no good, them. The Dark Angels behind him scoffed as they crowded around the thunderhawk's holo-display.

"It says 'The Reckoner' " blurted out one of the Dark Angels, pointing to the ghostly holographic display of the incoming fleet. Odeen shrugged, not letting those blasted green-armored fools know how poorly his reading skills were.

"Reckoner," Odeen blurted, "this is Odeen of the Space Wolves, you are emerging from the warp directly over our position. Touch your troops down onto this hive." He waited for the static voice from the holo-display to reply to him. Tapping his foot on the metal floor, tapping the controls at the base of the display impatiently, Odeen wondered if he should try again.

"Odeen, this is Marshal Valchonius of the Black Templars' fifth company. Is that your beacon, guiding us?" asked the crackling voice through the vox-grid. A cheer filled the cabin at the sound of another space marine's voice.

"No, it's the Great Khan's," Odeen smiled.

"What?"

"Nevermind that. Marshal, where in the Russ is the Salamanders ship?" the air itself seemed to grow thick at this question. The glee that had followed the sighting of the reinforcements was being slaughtered by this horrid observation. Why should all the chapters answer the calls for aid, save one?

"They…uh…it seems they preferred to take their own way here. They broke convoy and departed through the warp. We lost contact with them quickly. They looked like they were following something. Whatever it was, it took them from us. The warp's perils might have tricked them to their deaths," the marshal's heavy voice stated. "It is a loss for the Emperor."

"For the Emperor," echoed the chamber in humble respect for the missing chapter. Odeen was horrified: were the Black Templars and the Dark Angels going to waste their good fighting spirit crying over this?

"BAH!" Odeen snorted, "they're not lost you big sad oaf. Listen here: we arrived a week ago to this planet stuck up in a slaughter with the damned despoiler and his freaks. Get the Russ down here and help us out!" The Space Wolf in Odeen's blood bled through quite prominently. A few Dark Angels growled at him for this apparent disrespect.

"Their souls require proper care…" the Black Templar said,

"It is not as important as what transpires," Odeen replied, "the Dark Angels, my Space Wolves and I are loctated at the very summit of a towering hive city. It rests not an hour's flight away from the Imperial Palace. Abaddon himself marches towards it as we speak, plodding past our defenses. The Terran PDF and the Imperial Guard need our help to quell the traitors."

The mention of the Imperial Palace in danger pressed the conversation to its end. No doubt, every ship in the whole fleet worked its crew to their very limit to get every system underway. Their cannons burned and their shields rose to maximum as the press of heretical ships grew thicker as the enemy replied to this intervention. An ugly mess of salvaged prows and warp-sculpted bulkheads soared in towards the beautiful spires of the battle barges, batteries firing. As the two fleets exchanged a furious firestorm over Terra, the long-awaited reinforcements descended towards the island of land that did not burn. A shell of hot air appeared around each of the scores of thunderhawks and drop pods, each cutting through the atmosphere, every occupant grim-faced at the prospect of fighting for the direct safety of the palace.

This was a battle they could not afford to lose.

…

Deep in the heart of the warp, a lifeless rock rolled, as helpless as a leaf in a gale. It was a moon, long since devoured by the hungry chaos-infested immaterium. It was unremarkable, a giant speck of dust or a monumental shard of granite that had floated too near a rift in time. The unassuming appearance was, however, only a charade. Deep in the lightless caverns of this rotund colossus lay a machine of an ancient design. Stashed away with an attitude that one might call careless, it sat undisturbed for thousands of years. It was long in shape with a prow that carried only a long cannon that could swallow a titan of the Adeptus Mechanicus. The engines upon its rear lay in sterile silence. Along the workings of its green body were several places that were emblazoned by the draconic head of the Salamander's iconography. This machine, this ancient ship, was focused most around the great cannon that dressed its head. Its type had not been built anywhere before its creation nor after. Upon the lip of this mighty but unused weapon was chistled the cannons title.

[i] The Unbound Flame [/i]

A shudder rocked the cavern as a Salamander ship pressed down onto it. It had been here that their forgefather had said the prophecy had said they would find the final artifact of Vulkan. It had been here that the forgefather had said their primarch's influence would touch them in these final days.

…

Smoke rose up.

The roughened and thunderous din of falling shells coloured the air with the shades of war, casting everything underneath an ominous haze of violence. Nowhere could the crash of shells be escaped, not in the depths of a burnt-out wreck nor at the bottom of one of the craters that pocked this sterile hellscape of war-ravaged Terra. Mountainous hives darkened the horizon: the only remaining structures that Abaddon had left. Those to the north stood tall and strong. Those to the south lay on their side. The corpses of titans, set upon by tall pyres of orange inferno. Across the wreckage-strewn plains, huddling in every hole, ravine, or relief offered by the twisted eternity of debris, were the last survivors of the Terran PDF and Imperial Guard in this whole region. Huddled in their meaer cover, they lay weakened, dead, or dying, their lasguns spitting defiantly at the advancing foe. Now and then, a blossom of dirt would lift itself up amongst their ranks, spraying body parts and rockrete in all directions. Men fought men died.

And still the smoke rose up.

Across the urban swamp crawled ten Black Legion land raiders, crushing anything still standing beneath their merciless treads. Around these juggernaughts of evil were masses of warp-spawned daemons, who rushed at the head of the advance with an unhuman hatred burning in their coal-hot eyes. Lasguns didn't slow them down and the flattened debris forced them to do nothing extra to reach their living prey. The humans were doomed, firing to the last, battling this wall of daemons.

Abaddon crushed a frail skull beneath his foot and looked down at the crater where the guardsman lay. He was a simple youth, sporting a misshapen nose and an extra thumb. His ropy guts hung from his torn uniform and the gasps me made were too pathetic to even draw a spark of satisfied sadism from the lord of chaos.

'If he were brought into the fold, he would have made a good follower,' Abaddon thought as he crushed the man's belly beneath his foot, crushing him to a slow an wretched death in his lonely crater. He wasn't worth the attention of his daemonic blade.

Abaddon was more concerned about the dark shadow in the northern horizon. It rose up, a mountain of Imperial construction, taunting him to come closer with its imposing shape. While his land raiders rolled past him, Abaddon did not break his gaze away from what he knew was the Imperial palace. There it lay, impossibly near but damnably far. The space marines had arrived at last. This fight would be a difficult one, even for his unstoppable advance. The mission in Camlan had to succeed.

"Black Legion!" Abaddon's voice bellowed. "Forward!"

From the curtain of smoke behind him, stepped the gold-trimmed shadows of his chaos space marines. The best of chaos, the greatest of the faithful. Their horns shone brightly in the fires of battle and their glowing red eyes could freeze the soul. Wordlessly, they advanced across the battlescape, behind the wall of land raiders, which advanced behind the ceaseless flood of daemons. In contrast to that shouting, gibbering mass, the Black Legion did no speaking. Each trooper was in humble awe at the task ahead of them while excited to private silence by the thought of the power they would soon have. With the powers of chaos at their side, the Black Legion advanced.

But the Emperor was with the defenders, as Abaddon would soon see.

…

Behind the short wall that rose defiantly against the flattened wreckage about them, Valchonius stared at the advancing tide. His eyes hurt to look at them and he did not dare to take in their every nightmarish detail lest he lose his mind. Skinless bulls, many-armed orbs, walking pyramids, maggots the size of men, horned humanoids, birds with bones for feathers… Valchonius shook his head and closed his eyes. They filled the horizon with their millions. There could only have been millions and Valchonius was not a man to exaggerate. The warp itself had come upon them. Even the Imperial Palace at his back did not make the task any less daunting. The fact that one of his whirlwinds could hit the palace from here made it worse. If they fell here, Abaddon would attack the palace directly.

"Emperor," Valchonius whispered, "give us the strength we need." He opened his eyes to the daemons, who were closing the distance with frightening speed. The Black Templar rose up onto the wall in plain sight, presenting himself to the horde. In one hand he carried his runed powersword, in his other hand, a stormbolter and in his heart was an unshakable zeal to the Emperor's word. His skeletal faceplate showed no fear. Valchonius rose his blade and let out a cheer.

It was answered by the forty-five thousand voices of the Adeptus Astartes from all but one of the surviving chapters. They were a sordid rainbow, the green of the Invaders, the dark purple of the Souldrinkers, the red of the Blood Angels and the black of Valchonius' own chapter. They leapt from their hiding place behind the short wall and beat down its doors, moving through the wall to battle the daemons. Valchonius himself leapt down to join them, leading the charge.

Seeing them, the daemons raced forth, knowing they had the day. Millions against forty-five thousand? Not even the Astartes could bear such odds. Shells crashed down towards their ranks, only to explode above the space marines' heads, having been stopped by the void shields that defended them this close to the palace.

"Formation!" Valchonius roared, stopping abruptly and pointing his storm bolter forward. Every space marine around him did likewise, forming efficitent and deadly hedges of guns to challenge the ocean of daemons. "NOW!" Valchonius bellowed, firing.

The air itself broke as the space marines fired. Ancient guns whose accuracy had killed thousands added more to their tally. Bolter rounds and spiraling rockets slammed home into the onrush of daemons. At just less than three hundred meters, daemons were punched from their feet and exploded into fire on the ground. Each man fired and each man reaped a kill, over and over. Soon, it could easily be said that each marine had felled ten demons with his shooting. The whole daemonic ocean seemed aflame with their dying. Alas, they kept coming and it looked like the marines would be washed away. It was not to be, for at that moment a true miracle struck.

Every daemon that came within about one hundred meters spontaniously exploded into red fire. They rushed obliviously on, adding their own deaths to the wall of bloody fire. When the marines stopped shooting to gape in wonder the daemons did not cease their suicidal charge. They came and they did not stop until the last of their millions had died and a three-kilometer fire burned in the field. Valchonius was one of the first to understand.

"The daemons cannot come any closer to the Golden Throne!" he shouted. A cheer arose from the Astartes lines. To fight for the Emperor was one thing, to behold his splendor firsthand on this side of death was a priviledge none had seriously dreamed of.


	45. The Tower at Camlan

Abaddon narrowed his eyes at the line of fire that had been made of his warp-spawned hordes. Dismay did not easily take the chaos lord but its heavy hand touched him deeply when he saw those daemons crumble and burn as though made of ash.

He turned about and headed back to the Black Legion, churning their way mechanically across the barren wastes the war had made of this part of the land. At last he understood. He had no remaining choice but to await for success from Camlan. As overwhelming as his power was, the Emperor's was greater. For the first time since he arrived, Abaddon had to concede defeat. It was a prick to his black heart, a mere weak slap that he shrugged off with ease. But it was a blow none-the-less, reminding him that he could fail yet.

In on the grey horizon, he saw his faithful coming. Their rough machines adorned with hard iron spikes that impaled the bodies of fallen defenders turned up dust in their trail. Behind them, Abaddon knew, the rest of his forces were coming.

'Chaos will not let my defeat be so," Abaddon thought with assurance as he rejoined his advancing legion. Their rhythmic footfalls were a heartbeat of thunder, hammering quickly in the excitmen of the carnage to come. 'The Imperials will not abandon the palace to sally forth and we cannot close too close without bringing the Emperor's power upon us.' Abaddon spat angrily at the ground. A final gate had been placed rudely into his path. Batter it down and he would have it.

Camlan was the key.

…

Smoke leapt up.

The horizon was burning with the heat of warp-fueled flames. It hurt Afennor's eyes to be this close, but his hate and his conviction forced him to weather it. The whole eastern horizon burned with the fire of Abaddon's bombing of the planet while this part of the world was reduced to a craggy land coated by the blackest of ash. It was difficult to make out the finer details of the earth, such was the darkness of the sandy ash that had everything under its cloak. Crawling over the next rock, Afennor peered at the distant gathering in the basin below the towering cliffs he snuck across.

In the sky was the looming darkness of the daemon world. Day turned to night under its rounded eclipse that filled the whole sky. The odd, dim flash of a grand explosion from some distant battle in space lit the sky at irregular intervals before fading away.

The enemy was about five miles away and fifty meters down, within a sunken pit. A lake might have once been here, the land certainly had the shape. If it had been artificially drained or emptied by nature, Afennor could never know. He didn't care either, his every thought was focused on Vashuss. Following the signal here had been a matter of stealing a PDF lightning craft and soaring this far out in the emptiness left by the war. He'd set the lightning down a sufficient distance from this basin and it currently lay at the bottom of a dizzying abyss.

This place, Camlan, lay near the edge of the protective void shields that had spared so much Terran land, was where Vashuss had stopped. Now, from this uneven cliff over a vast crowd of traitor Astartes, Afennor could take his shot.

There they were, all but the Black Legion, milling together in the most uneven lot that could be achieved. There was no coherency to anything, like all the evils of the universe had been bashed together into one ugly stain on the tortured black land. But there they were, the wrath of the traitor legions, in the tens of thousands, broken by the occasional giant of a daemon prince. Down there, somewhere, Vashuss waited.

'So this is Camlan?' Afennor thought as he prepared his rifle. That's what the implant said. Taking his stolen vox-set, Afennor hailed the Astartes.

"Brothers," Afennor said when the crackle of the set filled his ears. "This is brother-scout Zodan of the Ultramarines. I have found them, the traitor legions, they are in Camlan right now, preparing their gambit. I shall relay coordinates now." He pressed a red button on the vox-set. His job was done. A great peace settled over his mind. Now the Astartes knew where Camlan was, where the enemy was.

Now they would come in their thunderhawks and end this.

Afennor turned once more to the crowd of traitors, sighting the mess looking for Vashuss. Alpha Legion, Iron Warrior, Word Bearer, Thousand Son…

Afennor's heart raced when he spotted a red-skinned giant in the midst of the crowd. The great figure had only one eye and golden armor. He'd heard the stories before. Did he now look upon Magnus the Red?

A cold metal hand grabbed Afennor's hair and lifted him to his feet. The crush of metallic serpents coiled around his body as his rifle fell away. A cold gladius pressed into his throat.

"Hello Afennor," whispered Vashuss.

…

Streaking down, exploding out from the stinking vapour of the ash cloud that hung in the air beneath the terrifying black face of the daemon world above, the Space Wolf thunderhawk swept. The ashen cloud recovered, only to be broken a second time by a swooping Dark Angels thunderhawk. Like twin raptors, they skimmed above the craggy darkness of the land below them, their heraldry illuminated softly by the peacefully dancing pyres of daemonic flame that lay just beyond the reaches of the void shield a few short kilometers away. They ducked down, skimming close to the ground's unhappy surface, flying as low as the great machines could dare to go, their engines leaving a long trail of black soot in their wake.

"Terrain is highly….irregular," Usoran heard Odeen remark over his headset. "Afennor's signal came from the lip of a deep basin about twelve kilometers north."

"Camlan?" asked Usoran, touching the hilt of his great sword.

"So it would seem. Unless the boy is as traitorous as you think. But I don't know, I spent enough time with him to know him as a friend and I do not think the boy carries the potential inside him. And you are a Dark Angel, so your suspicion is naturally misguided." Usoran rolled his eyes. "Of course, it won't matter if we find his skinless body hanging from a stake now, will it?"

"Just tell me what you see," Usoran replied, recalling how his repaired ship's sensors were still dead and unfunctional. It was a miracle his thudnerhawk was even flying after that torpedo hit.

"There looks to be the remains of a river nearby, a twisting river and…wait." Usoran heard Odeen speaking to someone else. "Set down now! Set down now!"

"Pilot!" Usoran shouted to the compartment, "set her down!" There was an abrupt shake and a shudder and the sound of engines died. Both thunderhawks had touched down in the bowl of a crater, apparent once Usoran and the rest of the twenty men he had were outside. Odeen and the twenty he had brought were outside already.

"What was it?" Usoran asked calmly, crossing over to Odeen. He was the only Dark Angel to approach the Space Wolves. United as they were by their common cause, neither chapters were willing to mix, even as Terra burned around them. Fools.

"The basin is now less than five kilometers away," Odeen said. "Captain, it is swarming with traitors." Usoran flinched and thought of the tower he had seen and the message his primarch had spoken.

"We must stop them. We will go to where Afennor was on foot. Lars! Hail command and tell them of our discovery. Everyone else, stay vigilant and head out," Usoran said nothing more as he and Odeen led their respective parties away from their landing site. Across the depressing sands they swept, pausing only once to take notice of a freshly landed Lightning fighter, which bore the serial number of one stolen from a Navy hangar shortly after Afennor vanished. They did not stop again until they came to the very edge of a great pit in the earth, stretching on indefinitely. Before they could look inside, a whispering roar from many thousands of voices froze their hearts.

"The traitor legions, they are already here," Odeen cursed. The marines all ducked down and inched to the edge of the basin. Looking inside, they beheld a terrible sight. Gathered there, distant but foreboding, was a mighty host of traitor marines, standing in a broad circle, eight layers deep. Usoran wondered if he could have a thunderhawk strafe them before noticeing dispersed ring of manticores arranged around the circle. It was a good thing they'd landed when they did.

"Sweet Emperor, look at them all. There must be one hundred thousand," cursed a Dark Angel.

"No, no," said a beastly Space Wolf as he stood up and raised his axe. "I won't stand here. Russ is calling me and I will die a true warri…" Usoran tackled him.

"The only thing you will do is get cut down by bolters and give us away," Usoran rasped to the foolish warrior. "I will not have our situation compromised by a…" he was going to say "diehard."

"By a what?" the warrior shook himself away. "By a SPACE WOLF? Is that what the proud cat has to say? The Dark Angel who knows nothing of honour or glory?"

"HeHaHeHahAhe…"

All eyes turned to sound behind them. Standing at the summit of one of the crags that hung over them, was Vashuss of the Alpha Legion. He clutched Afennor, who was still alive, into his chest, wrapping him in the coils of his serpents and holding a gladius to his throat. His free hand was pressing the boy's mouth shut. Flanking him were twenty terminators, dressed in Alpha Legion colours, their heavy weapons trailed on the loyalists.

"They have higher ground," Usoran whispered to Odeen.

"When we attack, keep to your own side, Dark Angel," Odeen whispered back.

"Vashuss, remember me?" Usoran asked.

"I've never seen you before in my life," Vashuss replied. "But I suspect I know why you think you've seen me before." He looked from Space Wolf to Dark Angel. "I just love watching you two fight. Even now as the days of the Materium come to an end, you still fight like the animals you wear. Wolf, lion."

"Snake," Odeen spat. A few Space Wolves laughed.

"You truly are a warrior of the Emperor. A blathering ignorant freak who believes in the Imperium," Vashuss said. "And still you defy me." His voice softened. "I have not slain your comrade and that is because I am a merciful man. If you wish to keep yourselves alive, you will do as I say and accept my mercy when I give it to you." He paused to type in a message into a machine on his wrist.

"Join the Alpha Legion."

…

Far below them, the circle of faithful marines was complete. Each legion formed a circle, thus leaving eight circles. In the middle, the tower would rise up. The thin air was filled with the sound of the Word Bearer's chanting. From their words, the seeds of chaos would be planted. The primarchs chanted also, their heavy voices adding a divine strength to the power of chaos that was brewing.

- .... . -.-- .----. .-. . / .... . .-. . .-.-.- / .. .----. .-.. .-.. / .... --- .-.. -.. / - .... . -- / --- ..-. ..-. .-.-.- / -.-. --- -. - .. -. ..- . / .-- .. - .... / - .... . / -.-. . .-. . -- --- -. -.-- .-.-.- / .-- .... . -. / - .... . / - .. -- . / -.-. --- -- . ... --..-- / -.-- --- ..- / -- .. --. .... - / .... .- ...- . / - --- / --. .. ...- . / - .... . / --- .-. -.. . .-. / - --- / ... .--. .-. .. -. --. / - .... . / - .-. .- .--. .-.-.-

Those words were what Vashuss saw upon his arm-mounted machine. He considered sending a coded message back but decided there was no use.

"What is is Vashuss?" asked Slaesh from beside him.

"The loyalists are here. We cannot let them interuppt the ceremony," Vashuss answered. The air crackled with red energy and the center of the circle began to smoke. Vashuss looked above them, at the daemon world. What was taking so long?

"Does he need help?" asked Slaesh.

"He didn't say," Vashuss replied as the ground in the center of the circle exploded open.

….

"Well?" Vashuss asked with a sneer, "will you join my legion?"

"You already know the answer to that, traitor," spat Usoran. In the distance, an explosion echoed.

"Then I think you know what will happen to you," Vashuss smirked, "but let the fight be fair. Come and get us." The terminators and Vashuss withdrew from the crag. A flurry of grenades were thrown after them before the loyalists stormed to the summit. Over rocks and through craters they went, hurrying to kill the heretical lord. When the reached the top of the crag they prepared to fight to the death. They only caught sight of the Alpha Legion terminators teleporting away, leaving Vashuss alone with Afennor.

"You idiots!" laughed Vashuss, "the ceremony is all that matters! And I've managed to delay you just long enough!" Neither Usoran nor Odeen were troubled as the grabbed Vashuss and wrenched Afennor from him. Both pounded him to the floor.

"Where is my rifle?" Afennor asked. Usoran ignored him.

"Speak traitor, what did you do to Afennor?" Usoran demanded.

"I put a special organ into his neck," Vashuss replied as the loyalists gathered around his beaten body, "Ha! It would only work on him. The organ was grown from the brain of a psyker. It let Afennor know precisely where I was so he could chase me. Since he knew that I was going to Camlan, he would know to exploit it, use it to lead you here."

"But why?" Usoran was cautious. This made no sense.

"Why did we chosse Afennor?" asked Vashuss, "only Afennor hated the two of us enough to pursue us all the way here without wondering if what we did to him was a trick. But Afennor told us that he didn't tell you about the implant. Why? Answer that Afennor." The Ultramarine said nothing. "It was because you would take the implant away from him and rob him of his only shot at revenge. You would be more cautious over the gifts of chaos than he. He would rather you have known when I was going to be at Camlan without telling you how he knew."

"Why?" Afennor asked suddenly, "it was what I've wondered since you gave it to me. I assumed it was to entertain you with my chase. So why if not that?"

"Easily answered," Vashuss cackled. "It is because you would lead a number of the defenders here, away from the Emperor, making his defense that much weaker. You would come here and I would make sure you didn't interuppt the ceremony and it's too late now you fools. Just look."

Usoran looked behind him. In the middle of the circle was a crimson bonfire.

"We will still stop the ceremony," Usoran said. He drew the Lion's Sword and plunged through Vashuss' armor and into his heart. The lord gasped and coughed out blood.

"You…can't…" Vashuss whispered with his last gasps of breath, "too…late." And he died.

"Where is my rifle, I've got to shoot that bastard," Afennor said angrily while the loyalists rushed towards the basin.

"Who, Vashuss?" Usoran asked. "Vashuss is dead."

"This one is. Apparently this one killed Logan and the other one killed Calgar," Afennor looked into Usoran's confused eyes. "Oh, right, you don't know." And then he told Usoran Vashuss' greatest secret.

…

Vashuss sighed with remorse as the earpiece went dead.

"Goodbye brother," he muttered to his dead twin, his voice unheard beneath the Word Bearers.

A shimmering perimeter formed around Camlan. To a man on the ground it would only be a curious horizontal light in the far distance but to the fleets in orbit, they beheld an octagon of white light burned onto Terra's surface. In the very center burned the red bonfire of warp energy erupting from the sorcerous chanting of the massed legions. With the words of the Word Bearers and their black apostles, the ceremony reached its climax.

…

"Hurry!" Usoran shouted to his men. The ground was shaking and convulsing. Whatever was causing this unnatural earthquake had started it when that strange white light appeared on the horizon. Around him, he could hear bolters going off, spitting bolts at the too-far-away enemy in the basin below them, who seemed untouched by the quake. The stumbling advance of the loyalists was obviously doomed from the beginning, but in this a last ditch effort, Usoran would rather die fighting than let the ceremony reach its height. Once that tower was over the Imperial Palace, all was lost.

What tower?

As a rock swished overhead, he realized what the tower would be.

"Duck!" Usoran shouted as a flying rock decapitated the Dark Angel next to him. He crouched down and watched the horror unfold.

The flame in the middle of the circle was crawing colossal rocks towards it. They soared through the air and landed in the circle's center. The circle expanded outwards as more and more rocks hurled themselves into the middle. It was a horizontal meteor shower while rocks soared through the air like clusters of missiles to reach their destination. The heap of rocks did not bloat. Instead the rocks turned to magma swifter than ice turned to water in an open flame. The magma rose up into a verticle snake of molten rock, growing taller with every addition until Usoran beheld an unnatural totem of magma whose base burned with warp-infused flame while rocks still swooped in to add to it.

The tower!

"Thunderhawks!" Usoran shouted into his earpiece, hoping the crew of his ship could hear him. "Get over here! Strafe that basin! Transmit distress to everything around! Destroy that tower!" He could almost feel the weight of the Lion Sword weighing him down. His primarch was calling to him, begging him to succeed in his duty to the Emperor. Around him, the shouts of his brother Astartes were mixing together into a chaotic stew of living sounds. No more bolters fired: everyone was crouching down and looking into the basin with fear. Even Afennor, who had been so enthusiastic after recovering his rifle, was crouching in terror.

Then, the shaking was finished, ending so abruptly that Usoran wondered if he was imagining it. Moments ago, he could barely stand. Now…

"Brother-captain," said a voice in his earpiece, "we're coming in as fast as we can. But…the entire region…I don't know how to say this sir." Usoran knew what was happening.

"Captain!" a yell came from behind him. Turning around, he squinted into the distance, to where a Dark Angel was pointing. It looked like the land in the distance was disappearing, replaced not by darkness but by nothing. It crept towards them, slowly but too quickly for Usoran's comfort. The whole horizon, in fact, was disappearing, sinking down.

'The land had broken away from Terra into a disc of flying rock,' Usoran thought, 'and the edges are breaking away.' Soon, there would be no ground left to stand on.

"Thunderhawk! Do you see that?" Usoran asked.

"Yes," came the reply, "we are hurrying. The ground is about fifty meters below you." Usoran looked up, but with the daemon world blotting out the sky, there was nothing to judge distance with.

"Listen, open your ramps fly at a forty-five degree angle and stay at the edge, we shall be there momentarily," replied Usoran. His locator homed in on the thunderhawk and he ordered his men to withdraw. They had only one shot at this. There was nothing they could do to stop the tower from forming. But, Usoran reckoned, perhaps they could still stop the ceremony.

Just then, as he advanced towards the collapsing ground, Odeen rushed up next to him and pointed to the sky. Usoran looked up and his heart froze.

"Sweet Emperor, please lend us your strength," he muttered. The daemon world was twisting and shifting. Falling from its surface, towards the tower like a waterfall of oil, was a solid black mass of matter. Usoran could imagine it now: the world turning as malleable as water and flooding Terra with a slick mess of liquid rock. Instead, as a sliver of that great bubbling, fluid world came crashing down to the ground, it touched the magma tower and disappeared into it. The rest of the world was following suite: the planet turning to liquid or whatever and getting sucked into that pillar of magma, now standing a kilometer above their heads. Terra was being filled with chaotic energy, no doubt.

"What do we do?" Odeen asked in desperation, "Usoran? What do we do?" He sounded afraid. A nearby yell caught their attention. It was a Space Wolf: shrieking as the earth below him turned to tar, trapping his feet. By the unholy energies of the world that Terra was absorbing, daemonic claws made of solid tar were reaching up to tear gashes from the trapped marine's armour. When another Space Wolf ran to his aid, he too was ensnared by the unholy forms, which were replaced by new ones even as bolters blew them away. Panicking space marines, to Usoran, was as alarming as watching a sun lose its light, like watching an ocean dry up.

"We…" he was panicking too. "Hurry to the thunderhawks. They should have their ramps open." Behind them, a burning nimbus opened up into reality. "Hurry!" the two were off before they could see what form of daemon would be unleashed. And behind them, the tower continued to drink the world above them.

The edge of the collapsing ground was soon where Usoran was. He stared briefly out at the ground, now hundreds of meters below him and wondering in awe at the sheer weirdness of what he was part of, before ordering his men aboard the ships that hovered there. The thunderhawks stayed by the advancing edge, keeping themselves against the retreating edge, their ramps open. Dark Angels and Space Wolves crossed the awkward bridge into their respective ships.

"Go," Odeen pushed one of his last men into his ship. "Usoran," he said to the Dark Angel as Usoran prepared to enter his. Before he could talk.

"Missiles!"

Usoran heard the warning before he sprinted from the ledge. The last thing he saw were both thunderhawks exploding into flame under a frenzy of manticore missiles. Both ships were then gone from sight, destroyed, smashing to the ground hundreds of meters below in twin comets of ruin along with all on board. Too dazed to think, Usoran fled by instinct from the cliff, which no longer offered any help to him. His thunderhawks were gone, the idea of his counterattack that had been forming in his head was gone, his hopes were all gone. Did he even have any squad members left? Dazed, Usoran turned around and saw seven Dark Angels, Odeen and six Space Wolves and Afennor all running towards him, fleeing the collapsing edge, charging towards the tower.

"What do we do?" Usoran asked the air. He got no answer, except the shrieking giggle of the slavering daemon coming up behind him. He saw Afennor shoot and the daemon coughed and evidently disapated. Usoran didn't care. He now knew they were on Camlan and Camlan would soon be at the palace.

…

"The mission to Camlan has succeeded perfectly," Abaddon told his assembled champions. Around them lay a ring of land raiders: a tiny island in a sea of daemons. In the distance, the Imperial Palace awaited them with her protection of space marines. "When the daemons go forward, we follow."

"Death to the False Emperor," echoed his lords.

…

Across the plains, his inhumanly agile legs sped him. Fuegan could see the Imperial Palace in the distance. At last, his journey was coming to an end.

…

"Sir, the daemons are advancing," Captain Draceul of the Blood Angels heard from one of his scouts positioned at the parapets. Within a stone's throw behind him, was the cliffside wall of the Imperial Palace. Above him, the spires rose into the clouds. Draceul squinted at the advancing tide, closing the distance across the shattered plains with remarkable speed. Why weren't they dying? He would have pondered it, but he had a headache. So did every Blood Angel in his squad. Draceul thought he could taste blood.

…

"Here they come!" yelled the colonel to the innumerable Imperial Guardsmen poised inside the Imperial Palace. He turned to look outside. The space marines had only a few regiments of guardsmen supporting them outside.


	46. The Final Victory of Chaos

Across the sky it sped, like a cast stone. Now less than a few square kilometers in size, a chunk of Camlan flew. It was shaped like the eight-pointed star. The first spires of the palace came into view.

The circle continued to stand around the base of the tower even as the plate of Camlan smashed into the palace, toppling brittle spires and crushing sections of the sacred building beneath its disk. Camlan pressed into the palace, a giant coin into a bed of clay, sinking as deep into its top as it could go. When the dust settled, the Imperial Palace had, embedded into it, the mass of Camlan and its terrible molten tower, rising highest above the spires above the Emperor's own home. Bewildered defenders knew not what to make of this spectacle. The invaders hollered and jeered. Thus, with the molten tower crowning the Emperor's palace, the tsunami of daemons rushed the space marines defending the palace in one final blow against the Imperium of Man.

As the marines prepared to sell their lives dearly, they looked around them at the ground they stood upon and saw it twisted by the powers of chaos. Marines jumped back in alarm as red flames erupted from the ground, issuing forth from bottomless cracks. The clouds above their heads began to smoulder and flame. Like a inflammable vapor, the clouds of Terra burned. Like the blasted hellscape of a daemon world, the land of Terra began to blacken and burn as steely spikes arose from its surface.

And all across Terra, psykers screamed and died as the power of chaos claimed their souls. Not even some of the Astartes librarians could stop the flood of chaotic energy that Camlan was now breaking upon the world, and soon, the universe.

The Space Marines abandoned the field, retreating for the safety of the Emperor's Palace, where the flames of chaos did not fall. The thuds of defensive guns covered their retreat, but what feeble losses they inflicted upon the waves of attacking daemons were quickly replaced as more terrible monsters crawled out of the cracks in the earth. And behind them, the dark silhouettes of the Black Legion approached like a shadow, at their head, the new Horus: Abaddon the Despoiler.

…

Usoran, Afennor and Odeen crouched in a meager ditch to hide from the eyes of the ceremony. They could hear the daemonic laughter and see the burning sky over their heads. Usoran chanced a glimpse out at the ceremony.

A thin ring of horned Word Bearers, Dark Apostles by their appearances, were moving around the outermost ring in unison, chanting evil incantations to the tower. As he watched, a shard of black metal winked into being in front of one of their mouths. It slashed through the air and buried itself into the tower of magma. Every sentence this ring of men spoke seemed to create another shard. Dozens of shards flashed towards the tower every second. It was an insane sight but then again, so was every sight the powers of chaos built.

"Afennor," Usoran said, "those men chanting. Shoot one." It was a long shot that they would disrupt the ceremony but a worthy chance none-the-less. He had, after all, seen in his vision, a tower of black metal would be responsible for the end of all things. Perhaps when the tower was all metal? He had to try.

"Shoot one, you can make the shot at this distance," Usoran whispered.

"And then what?" sighed the scout as he joined Usoran by the ditch's lip. "They'll kill us."

"We will still have disrupted…"

"Usoran," the scout's voice grew soft. "Maybe there is nothing we can do. Maybe there never was. And all the sacrifices we made, all the lives we lost fighting Abaddon's final push, there was just nothing we could have done." Afennor's eyes took on what soldiers of the Imperial Guard called "the thousand yard stare."

"It's not a force we can fight Usoran, it is within us all. Depravity, violence, cunning and the march of time that all mortals carry. Chaos. And for thirteen thousand years, we wrestled with it. We fought it and every alien that pounced upon us following our fall from grace at the end of the Horus Heresy. I wonder what we were fighting for." Usoran looked sideways at the scout.

"What were we trying to do Usoran? Stop chaos? We can't. It's like death."

With that, an inhuman huge voice thundered. It was the voice of Lorgar himself and hearing it hurt Usoran's ears.

"SO LET IT BE!" he said. With that, the whole tower turned into a spire of gleaming black metal. From its tip shone a beacon of red light into the sky. Usoran knew without being told what it was. It was the Emperor's light, now tainted by chaos. It didn't matter if Afennor had shot a dark apostle. It probably wouldn't have made a difference if he had shot Lorgar.

Usoran still tried, he still fired his bolter. The bolts impacted against an invisible barrier around the circles, leaving the apostles unharmed. The courrpted shield! It was up!

They had lost.

…

The universe was being overrun by chaos.

Upon the world of Styeloi IV, rifts in space and time suddenly formed. From every psyker's eyes and mouth, daemons boiled, hundreds at a time. Chaos unbound carried across the warp broke free to devour the populace.

…

Rarend turned away from the planet he was over. He didn't want to watch the warp storm's sudden rapid expansion.

…

The universe was being overrun by chaos.

"Armstrong!"

Governor Armstrong looked in terror at the space over the world his ship hung across. Though the tyranids had finally been eradicated, the warp was now replacing them as the most significant threat. What he was was a growing warp storm engulfing the atmosphere.

"Emperor…help," Armstrong didn't know what to do. The bridge panicked as the warp expanded outward to consume his ship. In a desperate last act of defiance, Armstrong loaded his laspistol and brought its muzzle to his temple. He pulled the trigger and ended it.

…

The universe was being overrun by chaos.

Asurmen face lowered. Even here, in the depths of the craftworld, he could hear the screams of dying eldar: the last of their kind. The farseer to his right: his only companion, shrieked as her soul was sucked from her by the Great Enemy. She crumbled to the ground, nothing but a pile of ash and soot. Not in that way, Asurmen would not have it.

As he felt Slannesh tug on his soul, he rose his diresword above his head.

"Do not fail us Fuegan," he said, before he stabbed himself. The mightiest of the Phoenix Lords died as, all over his craftworld, the final candles of the eldar were snuffed away.

[i]The hand of Asuryan crushed by the hand of Asuryan[/i]

…

Usoran had lived for centuries and, although his skills were mighty, had been present at many grim and bitter defeats for the Imperium. Yet always he could take solace in knowing that the fight could yet continue.

Not this defeat.

This was the ultimate failure. From here and until the end of forever, the damned souls of the galaxy's inhabitants would be playthings for the chaos gods, forever fueling their power so the gods could continue their dead-ended wars with one another. The horror of it all was too immense to calculate. The Emperor no longer protected. He enslaved and danced on the strings of the chaos lords. No hope. No light. No end to the pain.

Eternal victory to the Chaos Gods.

"Usoran, Dark Angel, brother," Odeen began as the ground he stood upon shifted slightly. The red sky convulsed as the charnel tower channeled more energy into it. "Perhaps this is too late, but I do want to say something." Usoran could not take his eyes from the tower and the crowd of traitors around it. The flickering energies of the dark apostles almost shrouded his view of it. It would not be long before Holy Terra was a daemon world. Amidst the traitors, the surviving primarchs and their chaos lords stood above the others, almost daring the space marines to try and charge them. Usoran knew they would be dead before they got to the first chaos warrior.

"What?" Usoran asked. Odeen stepped away from his Space Wolves.

"Perhaps…perhaps if we are to be struck down now then we shall not die as rivals?" Odeen timidly suggested. "Maybe the time has come to end the feud? Now, when all has been lost." Odeen would bring that up at a time like this? The Dark Angel beside Usoran succumbed to the chaotic powers and clattered to the ground, warp energy crackling out of his armor. Soon, Usoran too would succumb.

"Then it is ended," Usoran replied. He reached over with his green-armored hand and shook Odeen's paw. Around them, Dark Angels and Space Wolves approached one another to shake hands. A few low words of reconciliation were exchanged. It was a hollow celebration. Odeen and Usoran, two battle-brothers, released, looked back at the tower and prepared for eternity.

"If we hadn't failed the Emperor…" Odeen said angrily.

"Take some pride in knowing that your tried," Usoran replied, "there can be no shame in dying on your feet, the Emperor's name of your lips and faith in your heart." But they had still failed everything.


	47. Our Time has Come For the Emperor

Vashuss could hear the chanting of the apostles in his ears, their words feeding the tower. He knew that they were the ones giving strength to the tower. Looking out across the traitor legions, he sighed. The loyalists had lost. After this day, there would be no more Imperium of Man, no Emperor, no Adeptus Astartes, perhaps, if all went well, no mortals. So Abaddon had succeeded. Finally.

He looked at the little ditch in the distance, near the edge of Camlan. They were not hidden, Vashuss knew they were there.

He calmly raised his wrist to his face and quickly hit in the message. Lorgar was briefly distracted from his thunderbolt chanting, looking at Vashuss as he worked, then looked back across Camlan. Vashuss finished his code and reviewed it.

- .... .. ... / .. ... / ...- .- ... .... ..- ... ... ---... / -.-. .- ... - / --- ..-. ..-. / -.-- --- ..- .-. / ... -.-. .- .-.. . ... .-.-.-/ --- ..- .-. / - .. -- . / .... .- ... / -.-. --- -- . .-.-.- / ..-. --- .-. / - .... . / . -- .--. . .-. --- .-. .-.-.-

With a flick of his finger, he broadcast it to his warriors on Terra.


	48. Unlikely Forces

"It is done my lords!" Lorgar laughed to the sky, "it is finally done! Come now to us!" His voice was like brass thunder, but even it was only one noise amongst a deafening chorus of chanting voices. "The warp will be forever changing, pleasurably, bringing blood and decay! And so the galaxy will burn! We have done it for you! Behold now, watch the Imperium…"

"…Die."

Silence.

Lorgar could not speak.

Silence.

Vashuss had just stabbed him in the throat with his gladius.

Silence.

Vashuss jumped back as he swung his gladius back. Lorgar collapsed and his head rolled in a different direction. Though many from the chaos legions stood nearby, no one initially reacted.

…

Slaesh knew what he had to do. He raised his bolter, focusing the iron sights on the distant loyalists. Around him, his Alpha Legion comrades did likewise. They too had gotten the order.

"Do they approach?" asked the Word Bearer behind him, barely audible over the chanting of the dark apostle maintaining the tower's power. Then, Slaesh brought his bolter around, swinging behind him to bring its barrel upon the nearest dark apostle. In a roar of cackling bolterfire, the man's damnable chant was brutally ended.

"What have you done…?" began the Word Bearer, unable to finish before vanishing under Slaesh's bolterfire. All around him, his Alpha Legion brothers were slaughtering the dark apostles, ending their chanting as swiftly as a viper kills a mouse. And no one fired at them.

…

No one had reacted at first. The suddenness of their whipping strike had been perfect and their actions somehow unreal. And though they had lived long lives of treachery and mayhem, not one man in the traitor legions could believe that the Alpha Legion could betray them at the threshold of ultimate victory.

All the better for him.

As sporadic bolterfire erupted arund him, Vashuss leapt through the traitor legions, eyes set on Ahriman, bolter spitting death into the men around him. The confused Thousand Sons around the sorcerer turned around in time to see Vashuss barreling down on them, bolter in one hand, cybernetic snakes in the other, lashing down at him and his guard. In moments, he had cut them all down, leaving the Thousands Sons as collapsed piles of armor either riddled to powder by bolts or beheaded by the bites of his vipers. Ahriman lay on the floor, his side gashed open.

"The Lord of the Alpha Legion has gone mad!" Ahriman shouted, but fell quiet with the lack of an audience who could hear him. All around him, bolts were flying. The Alpha Legion marines battled with the other legions, though the one-sided fighting in some places forbade the use of any word except "executed" to describe the killing. Their bolters were gunning down chaos marines from behind. Chaos lords, who had been secure in their victory, found themselves being gutted from behind by their former allies of the twentieth. The once proud mass of chaos had degenerated into confusion as all but the Alpha Legion struggled to understand what was going on. However, once the initial confusion had blown over, the true traitors rallied against the sudden betrayal. Though the Alpha Legion was quick and skilled, they were outnumbered twenty to one.

"Traitors! All of you! Traitors!" Ahriman cursed.

"No," replied the lord of the Alpha Legion, "liars."

From the ground, Ahriman stabbed at Vashuss, grazing his armor with the wicked horn on his staff. It cut up his armor and lashed across his face, tearing violently into his rebreather mask, and peeling it right off, leaving the mask hanging off the staff like a harpooned tuna. Vashuss pulled the broken wiring left by the rebreather's messy removal from around his mouth and nose. Apart from this blemish on his equipment, Ahriman's effort was a small useless scratch.

"That's all you get," Vashuss snarled as Ahriman watched the man's lips move for the first time. The Astartes lord was pointing at his face, still with flopping remains of the rebreather's mechanism drooping down his armor like artificial creep. Behind him, a champion of the Emperor's Children was cut down by a treacherous Alpha Legion warrior. He knocked Ahriman's staff from his hands.

"Why have you done this to us? Chaos must know!" Vashuss drew his boltgun. "Why are you doing this?"

"For the Emperor," Vashuss replied as he raised his boltgun. Ahriman searched in vain for reason and gazed, for the first time, concentrated deeply upon Vashuss' face. If Vashuss could see the Ahriman's eyes, he would have seen some recognition as he looked on the face without the rebreather and, for the first time yet, saw a familiar face, a face he had known by another name. It had changed after all this time, but it was no less the same face. A face that had once led the Alpha Legion, a long time ago.

"By Tzeench…" Ahriman whispered, "It's you! It was you all along! That's why you never took off that damned rebreather!" Vashuss grinned, but only he knew whether it was in sinister glee at his discovery or the scale of Ahriman's error and the honour it gifted to him.

"I don't think you're right about that sorceror. You could be right, but I don't think you are," Vashuss said in amusement. Then he shot Ahriman to death. With Ahriman dead and the chaos position in the throes of cataclysm, Vashuss brought his wrist to his mouth and contacted his fleet.

"Orbital command," Vashuss said to his fleet over Cadia through his wrist-mounted communicator. "Execute a strafing maneuver and drop all your payloads directly onto the Alpha Legion's position. Lance batteries: fire directly upon the Serpent's Lair until it is destroyed. Then exterminate any elements of the Alpha Legion that remain with a continuous orbital barrage." He no longer needed the chaos-worshipping elements of his legion to help maintain the ruse.

After this day there would be no more Imperium. Nothing to feed Chaos.

Vashuss remembered what he and his twin brother did, as the carnage intensified around him, and more and more traitors began to understand what had happened, he remembered…

,,.

"It is a xenos artifact," he explained to the Alpha Legion sorcerer seated on the pillow before him. "Long buried upon Tartarus. It is inside there that the daemon resides. It is important that the daemon not be allowed to continue to remain where it is. The approaching warp storm will expose it to true followers of chaos, who may wreak eternal damage with the daemon as their slave." The psyker nodded, his bald head glistening in the candlelight of the tiny hab unit the two seated themselves in. Outside, behind a thin wall, the activity of the planet continued through the night, oblivious to the two Alpha Legion seniors that lay mere meters from them.

"And how shall I destroy it, lord?" asked the sorcerer. "I am ready to be sacrificed. Shall it be a ceremony of undoing, my lord?" They paused as a light passed across the only window. The room went dark again.

"I do not wish you slain to destroy it. The opposite. You and many others must die to unleash its power. When it is loose, it will corrupt countless systems, making it easier for us to raise cults to worship the ruinous powers of chaos. The inquisition will notice our cults. Our cells will make sure of that personally if they must, with a few brazen attacks to get attention. By then the daemons' corruption will be too deep. Exterminatus will follow. And so we will drain chaos that much more," Vashuss explained diligently. "And destroying this daemon outright will arouse suspicions. It isn't like the one we destroyed on Fenris."

"I understand." The psyker replied. "But I do not understand, great lord, how I shall die."

"The daemon will reward you when you are near to setting it loose, to bless you with a daemonic form. To refuse would raise its suspicions. Remember, we must give anything, do anything, pretend to BE anything, to keep the ruinous powers and this minions oblivious. You might have to activate your mind-wipe mechanism if it gets too serious," Vashuss explained. He held up a lecturing finger. "Remember what I taught you. All power demands sacrifice, Sindri. You must ensure that any Imperial counterattack destroys you when you take the daemon's blessing. This will be the final sacrifice needed to unleash the fiend to wreak its havoc for us to prepare the stage for more exterminatus actions."

"I will do this," Sindri replied. "The greater the apparent corruption, the faster the inquisition puppets will act."

"You know then, what it is I ask of you? I ask you to lay down your life, your soul, for the sake of this sector," Vashuss said. They fell silent again: another light shining through the window.

"I do. And who, my lord, are my other sacrifices?"

"To release the daemon, you will need to sacrifice a particularly attuned chaos soul at some point." Vashuss pulled a name out of his memory, thus sealing his fate. "Bale is a false lord of the Alpha Legion. He worships Khorne. My use for him has ended. Get rid of him for me. And as you do this, remember, all power demands sacrifice."

"All power demands sacrifice," Sindri repeated.

…

From his position in the hijacked ork kroozer, Vashuss could see the radar indicating the World Eaters struggling against the green tide. His mind was at peace. The daemon world Khorne would create from something Angron captured would grow more powerful with each drop of blood spilt during Abaddon's final crusade. Daemons of Khorne would flood the world in short order and likely accompany them to Camlan. He could not have it. By the Emperor, Vashuss would't allow Angron to have his world.

With a push of a button, Vashuss sent out a xenos distress call to a nearby ork world. Promises of a fight with the World Eaters were too intoxicating for the hate-fat brains of the greenskinned aliens. With the turn of a dial, Vashuss contacted another ork world, a distant paradise of crude barbarianism, across the cold sea of space. As his staring eyes watched the soft glow of the alien radar, the first landas from the warband that Vashuss had summoned in the morning began to arrive.

…

Vashuss stood in the rok on Armageddon

"We occupied this asteroid before the greenskins used it. Chaos showed us the fate the orks had for this broken rock. We needed only hide," Ahriman hissed. "Come, witness the favored of the Lord of Change as they bring about the fall of the Imperium of weaklings." Vashuss narrowed his eyes.

"The orks make war on the necrons all across the galaxy as the tyranids retreat. Very soon, there will be enough raw rage collected here to open a warp storm in an instant. I need only hide the risk from Imperial eyes" Vashuss explained. "Why do you risk it so brazenly? My way is slower but foolproof." This was true. It would also doom Tzeench to weaken ever further, until his power was completely drained. He would die before the rift opened.

"Tzeench demands speed," Ahriman whispered, then he turned to the rift.

"What is the real reason, sorcerer?" Vashuss smiled: nobody could lie to him.

"In this time, when nobody plots and plans, but dies and whithers the realm of Tzeench is…" Ahriman didn't say a word past that. "All haste must be had. The Imperium must die now, swiftly, not slowly as you would have it."

"Your god is dying, isn't he? He's sitting on his throne deep in his endless maze and sleeping, isn't he?" Ahriman turned to Vashuss and pointed his staff aggressively at him.

"Do not blaspheme against He Who Knows All. I was alive when your Primach drew breath."

…

"The troops are gathered as you requested, my lord. On the fields of blasted Cadia, the Alpha Legion is finally mustered in full, ready to join the force that heads to Camlann," Slaesh stated. "All nine heads are accounted for in full."

"Then we must make the sunderings," Vashuss replied. "I plan to be there when we deal the death-blow to the Imperium, the venomous bite. You too, Slaesh, you must lead the first head alongside me."

"What of the two heads of the legion that we cannot afford to take to Camlan? Third head and sixth head?"

"They will remain behind on Cadia."

"What lie shall you tell them to tether them here?" Vashuss didn't say he would lie, but Slaesh knew as intimately as he did that every sound his mouth ever spoke to the third and the sixth was tethered to a lie. They were true worshippers of chaos.

…

He was aboard his vessel, heading to join Abaddon, speaking to his legion.

"And we will be as immortal as the daemons themselves." Of the long host present, only Paskatera believed those words were true. "Hydra Dominatus!" Paskatera joined the cry as it rose again. Vashuss crossed his arms casually, so shroud his hands with his arms. Behind his armored forearm, Vashuss hand was typing a message into his wrist-mounted code-machine. To each man in the room, minus Paskatera, he warned that he who would repeat his next cry of Hydra Dominatus was a true follower of chaos.

"So remember," Vashuss said, his voice calmer than the preachy voice he had used. "The Imperials will not anticipate the trap. But when it is sprung, the faithless will be routed and slaughtered and their blood sent straight to Khorne." That meant one thing to Paskatera, but another to the rest of the Alpha Legion. "Hydra Dominatus!" went the cry. Paskatera echoed the cry as loudly as he could: the only one to speak. And so the whole formation noted him. "Our time approaches!" Vashuss continued, "the Time of Ending is upon us. Soon, it shall pass and our time will arrive. Hydra Dominatus!" Paskatera heard the cry repeated throughout the chamber as the Alpha Legion jubilantly raised their weapons into the air.

Paskatera had been a good fighter. But his function was the smallest: he was merely a man to flaunt the powers of chaos, dressed in Alpha Legion colours. He was just another face in a miles long spectrum of personalities and deeds done to help maintain the lie.

…

Usoran could not believe what he was seeing. The entirety of the Alpha Legion and many other chaos marines had turned on their brethren. The disciplined traitor ranks were in ruins and all the Black Apostles were dead. Was this part of the ceremony?

"What the Russ? What has happened?" Odeen asked. He looked uncertainly at Usoran.

"Why does it matter?" Usoran asked as he pointed the sword of his primarch forward. "Charge!" With a howl, seven Space Wolves, Dark Angels and an Ultramarine, billowed out across the field, determination in their eyes, blazing guns in their fists. A knot of Alpha Legion warriors headed their way, forming a defensive wall with their bodies, but they were facing the traitor marines and not Usoran or his ilk. One of the Alpha Legion dropped, slain by enemy bolterfire. Usoran took his place, unquestioning of why. With the Lion Sword in hand, he struck down a rushing bezerker as he threw himself at their line.

"Alpha Legion, rally at my position!"

Usoran turned silently to face Vashuss as he broke through the growing wall of his warriors as they took their positions close to where Usoran stood, his gladius stained with fresh blood. "Form into a phalanx and press into the heart of the chaos marines!" Vashuss noticed Usoran glaring at him and froze for a moment.

"Will you reconsider my earlier offer?" Vashuss asked Usoran who did not flinch. "We have given you what you want. We have halted the ceremony. Chaos stands at the prepice of obliterating the Materium. Winning this battle is all we have to do to destroy it forever." Their exchange did not last long.

"My lord! They come!" the wall of Alpha Legion fighters was abruptly pressed into. Waves of antlered World Eaters charged into them, chainswords blaring like sirens, bolt pistols cracking mercilessly. Three of them cut down an Alpha Legion terminator and dove at Vashuss, almost barreling him down with the force of their charge.

"I have your back, brother," Usoran cried, rushing to the lord's aid. Vashuss slid his gladius into the neckpiece of the first, leaving his back open to the other two. In a sweeping chop, Usoran sent the helmet and head of the next khornate warrior to the floor. The bezerker turned to face him, but a cybernetic snake whipped around his throat. The bezerker grabbed at his neck in alarm and his movements were stilled as the Lion Sword and Vashuss' gladius pierced him at once.

"Where are the other loyalists?" Vashuss asked, "the sky still burns and the ground still smoulders, we haven't won yet. I've killed Lorgar but there are still others who may take this up. We're outnumbered twenty times, Dark Angel, we need the other loyalists."

As if on cue, the thundering sound of jump packs filled Usoran's ears. Striking down from the heavens were fifty assault marines in Blood Angel colours, leaping up and onto the ledge of the plate and joining the fray.

"The Alpha Legion is on our side," warned Usoran.

"So I see," replied the assault marines in perfect unison. "Where, Dark Angel, did you get my brother's sword?" His brother's sword?

"Sanguinius?" Usoran asked.

…

"Draceui is not more," said the whole company of Blood Angels in unison while they marched up the maze-like halls of the Imperial Palace. "However, now cannot be the time to lament their lost minds. The Emperor is in danger once more." Alongside the Blood Angels, Valchonius and his Black Templars exchanged looks. They were under the ceiling of the Imperial Palace, while Terra burned around them, all the while daemons and heretics banged on the Emperor's defenses. The sudden loss of the Blood Angels to the taint of the Black Rage was proving to be a mixed blessing.

"Are you truly Sanguinius?" asked Valchonius. The host of Astartes ascended the next grand staircase, rising higher up the spires of the Emperor's palace and to the aid of the loyalists who had appeared from nowhere to assault the tower. Who were they? Raven Guard? Valchonius knew only that loyalist brothers had suddenly appeared amidst the chaos force to end their evil ceremony. It likely saved the Materium. No new cracks were opening across Terra and the convulsing flames of the orange sky had stilled to a soft sterile layer of light that covered all. No longer was chaos on the advance, nor was it on the retreat.

"Higher!" Valchonius sang back to the space marines behind him: all of them. "Higher to the tower and pray the Imperial Guard can hold the daemons off for long enough!"


	49. Spires of the Imperial Palace

**Against a relentless tide, they fought. Usoran, Odeen and Vashuss stood alongside one another, perched comfortably in the depths of the Alpha Legion phalanx, Bolterfire was no longer being exchanged. The battle had instead disintegrated into a close-quarters brawl between blades. Their group was rapidly dwindling under the onslaught of the traitor legions. Outnumbered one score to one, the Alpha Legion was doomed to be overwhelmed. The stunning momentum of their abrupt betrayal had been lost. Now, they battled desperately against a superior foe.**

**Odeen rose his axe into the air and swung it down onto the head of the closest traitor, incidentally a Thousand Son. The helmet broke, releasing dust into the air. Usoran finished the stunned foe with the Lion Sword, cleaving the man in two. He left his flank open, allowing a chaos warrior too close to him. A whipping cybernetic sepent took the chaos warrior around his unarmored head, snapping his neck. **

"**How long can we hold?" Usoran asked, "Vashuss, there must be more to your plan."**

"**The others will be here in time, Dark Angel," Vashuss answered, parrying a chainsword. To his right, an Alpha Legion marine fell to a chainaxe, reducing their number by one. Vashuss slew his attacker with a backhand from his gladius. The heretical tide was not diminished. Up the ranks, another Alpha Legion warrior fell: struck by a plasma shot. A second shot slashed into their ranks, striking dead another one of Usoran's allies.**

"**Afennor!" Usoran called back, "that grey-clad traitor atop that mound of corpses! Shoot him!" Behind him, Afennor raised his rifle. There was a heavy sense of ironic novelty in the air. Afennor, who had fought so hard to kill Vashuss, now stood a meter from him and was to shoot his rifle to save Alpha Legion lives. Everyone felt the irony of what was happening, fighting as they were beside the Alpha Legion. **

**Afennor fired his rifle. The heretic whom Usoran had pointed out fell back, shot in the head. Afennor reloaded. Usoran could see the temptation in his face. Vashuss had his back to him. The scout instead poked his rifle though the melee and fired carefully, taking out a heretic's eyepiece. **

**There was no time to reflect, no time to wonder in awe at how this could have come to pass. Only the battle at hand mattered. Usoran hacked down yet another chaos marine. Two Alpha Legion troops dismembered a howling terminator. A stray bolter round punched a Dark Angel from his feet. A rushing bezerker felled three members of the Alpha Legion before finally being downed. **

…

**Abaddon threw two men aside and stormed into the Land Raider. He pushed the squat servitor aside and placed his face near the vox-reciever built into the tank's wall.**

"**What's going on up there?" he yelled. No answer came through. "Damnation I command you by the authority of the warmaster, WHAT IS GOING ON UP THERE!" No reply came to him from Camlan. This was unbelievable! Just as victory lay naked to him, it was suddenly closing?!**

"**AHAHHHHH!" Abaddon shot the servitor to death in a frenzied rage. "Damn the tower and damn this plan! Must I do it myself? TAKE THIS TANK THROUGH THE WALLS! I storm the False Emperor's thoneroom and rip that mummy's blank, staring head right off its shriveled shoulders!" He turned to the terminator bodyguard that had followed him in. Their tall, looming forms grew dark as the ramp closed. "We go straight into the heat of the main assault. Kill at your leisure, but the False Emperor is my kill to make." The land raider thundered forward. **

**After the short, exhilarating trip, there was an almighty crash as the prow of the great tank tore a hole in the Imperial barricades. The ramp opened, disgourging the Black Legion's elite into the heart of the assault, now a battle-hell in the outermost defenses of the palace.**

**Abaddon faced miles-high walls, bristling with guns and defenders. A heavy gate lay a half kilometer from him, directly opposite the hole his tank had made. Around him, bunkers and trenches full of guardsmen fought desperately to hold off waves of nightmarish daemons. Rising above these monstrosities, were the inky dark shadows of the Black Legion, sewing carnage amongst the guardsmen without fear. They marched forward, trampling the imperial dead and dying, firing up at the windows of the wall before them. **

"**Let the galaxy burn!" Abaddon roared as he charged towards the gate. His terminators rushed through the fighting alongside him, their guns ripping through the imperial trenches. Hot bolter rounds sprayed bright blood into the air. Heavy feet crushed the ground beneath them. Their huge limbs batted daemons aside. A cheer arose from the Black Legion warriors at the sight of their lord and they fought all the harder, working their way towards that gate. Abaddon relished the chance to be the first of his legion to enter the palace. **

**To his right, he saw a squat bunker, from which poured heavy bolterfire. His daemonic sword danced across its surface, tearing aside the rockrete with unnatural ease. When he had made a hole deep enough, he stepped inside, where a pathetic squad of young guardsmen manned their posts. He gave them only one quick look at him before he was upon them, his talon shredding the screaming men to crimson ribbons. Their sergeant, he tore in two and cast to the floor. The legless man crawled helplessly towards the door. Abaddon stomped on his head, bursting it like a melon. With his terminators at his back, Abaddon ripped open the door and descended into the trench this bunker was a part of. **

**Through rockrete alleyways, Abaddon killed. Daemons were one thing, but Abaddon was no daemon: he was greater. The guardsmen he encountered could not turn their lasguns from the oncoming chaos hordes before he was upon them, mercilessly tearing them to bloodied meat. His claw was soon red with the lifeblood of scores of guardsmen. His daemon sword Drach'nyen sent the heads of guardsmen and officers rolling. Abadoon killed his way to the gate, leaving only mutilated remains of entire platoons in his wake. This was no challenge, these soft guardsmen were not what Abaddon had come to slay. Where were the Custodes? Where were the Astartes? **

**At last, the gate lay before him. Abaddon burst the head of a pleading commissar under his foot and stepped through the ruins to the gate. His terminator retinue exchanged fire with the surviving defenders around him as Abaddon reached the gate. **

**No Black Legion warrior or daemon had gotten this far. Abaddon relished his victory as he cut open the immortal gate with Drach'nyen. The unnatural blade made even the adamantium melt away from its evil metal. In seconds, the ancient gate that had stood for thirteen thousand years was breached. Behind him, defenders were frantically abandoning their trenches and falling back into the palace under the tide of daemons who tore them apart. The Black Legion remained where they were, firing at the defenders on the wall and in the windows. **

**Abaddon wondered what it would be like to kill the Emperor, to succeed where Horus had failed. That would be his final vindication, his sweetest victory. To prove to the skeptical daemon primarchs that he was greater than Horus. He WAS greater than Horus. He brought the forces of chaos this far! He did what Horus could not! **

"**Into the palace!" Abaddon shouted as he stepped towards the hole he had made. **

**Before he could set foot into the Imperial Palace, Abaddon the Despoiler fell dead.**

…

"**There! I cannot believe it!" Odeen pointed up the line. There, in his evil glory, was Magnus the Red. In his hands, energy danced, giving the impression of his hands being on blue fire. "If ever I should die, it would be in battle against him!" Odeen wasted no time in pressing through the Alpha Legion. A thunderous boom shook Camlan, loud and strong enough to slow the fighting. **

"**Fight me you big ugly brute!" Odeen shouted to Magnus as the primarch surveyed the battle for his first victim. Usoran cringed as his one eye fell over Odeen. **

"**Your chapter is destroyed, Space Wolf," said Magnus as the blood-mad Odeen broke through the Alpha Legion and swung his axe at Magnus. Usoran watched in sickness as Odeen was lifted from the ground by chains of blue flame that leapt from Magnus' hands. **

"**Leman Russ!" Odeen yelled like a madman, hurling his axe at Magnus, who sidestepped it, "Leman Russ will come! He will destroy you!" Another boom shook the air, louder than before. **

"**Leman Russ is dead, Space Wolf," Magnus told Odeen, "as are you." Usoran bowed his head in respect for Odeen. Such bravery to stand up to a primach…inspiring. He felt a little sadness when Magnus made good of his promise. He spread his hands apart and Odeen exploded in a nova of frosty blue fire. **

"**LEMAN RUSS LIVES HERETIC, I HEAR HIM." BOOM!**

**A section of the palace wall collapsed, crushing Thousands Sons beneath its weight. It had not been blasted apart, but pushed down from within. Magnus turned his head to the challanger, who stepped out away from the palace and onto Camlan to greet him. Bjorn the Fell Handed, followed by a host of Space Wolves. **

"**You will die too," Bjorn promised. "I die a happy man, for I will fight beside him. I heard him in the halls. He is coming."**

"**You are relics!" Magnus laughed, unleashing devastating bolts of chaotic energy upon the Space Wolves. The Astartes died in scores, burning to ash and exploding apart. The whole host was dying and Magnus was barely breaking a sweat! Usoran could not believe it. **

"**For Russ!" Bjorn shouted as he rushed the primarch, shouting even as his hull was ripped to metal ribbons by Magnus' evil sorcery. "For Russ…." He collapsed to the floor. "I hear him…" Usoran had no time to continue watching and fought on against the enemy tide. **

"**Russ is dead," Magnus promised the fallen dreadnought, his Thousand Sons leaving Bjorn alone for their primarch to finish, "as is your whole chapter," he added in a whisper. **

**Then, a beastly growl filled the air, continuous and ominous. It was coming from the hole Bjorn had left. What? More Space Wolves? Magnus would immolate them just as he did to the previous company! Yet, as he rose his head, he recalled Bjorn's words. He could hear the primarch. Around him, the battling hosts both turned to look at the hole Bjorn had created for his primarch. The beastly roar grew louder. And then…**

"**Leman Russ?" Magnus asked.**

…

**Abaddon the Despoiler was dead. He could not enter the palace, he did not even set his eyes on the Emperor, much less fight him the way Horus did. **

**His killer? **

**One the guardsmen, as he fell back, had taken a lucky shot with his lasgun. The bolt had sailed over seventy meters of air and stuck Abaddon in the ear. The bolt roasted the warmaster's brain inside his skull and sent the apocalyptic giant to the floor to join the corpses, much to the dismay of the Black Legion. With their leader dead, the Black Legion could only join the fighting at Camlan.**


	50. Martyrdom

**Leman Russ.**

**That is what the tank was known as. **

**It ground out, its engine was the cry of a beast. Upon its hull was an elaborate paintjob of a leaping wolf. From the hole in the wall, the snout of a long battlecannon roared fire. The shell that leapt forth swept through the air, a fiery point, and it pierced the cyclops eye of Magnus. The primarch's blinded head snapped painfully back. Blue fire leapt out of rents that appeared across his red skin, consuming him. Caught offguard and now killed, Magnus burned away to nothing before the staring eyes of the whole of Camlan.**

**They came forward, Leman Russ battle tanks, their mighty treads taking them onto Camlan, their guns spitting death into the chaos warriors. And so the promise that Russ had made with his last words was fulfilled. Here, at the end of all, he battled with his men, for it was they who led the space marine charge. **

"**Charge!" rushing out from between gaps in the tanks came the loyal space marines of the other chapters, slamming into the chaos flank, crashing into them like so many thunderbolts. Bolter roared, scything down the enemy. Swords hacked and killed. The enemy force reeled from the sudden charge. **

"**For the Emperor!" yelled Valchonius from the fore of the Astartes who came upon Camlan.**

"**For the Emperor!" echoed the Alpha Legion, who rushed to join the loyalists, Usoran at their head, spreading news of the Alpha Legion's true intention. **

**And so the final battle was joined and the whole of Camlan was covered with the forms of battling giants. **

…

**The Maze of Tzeench was ending. **

**The final orb of plotting and scheming had winked out with the death of Abaddon and the conclusion of Vashuss' plot. Once expansive labyrinthine halls shrank and shriveled like a whilting plant. Hallways made of mortal ambitions faded away to darkness. Foyers of solid thought dispersed to the void.**

**The creature, a spawn of Tzeench's maze, had no name and no true form. It was as changing as a mortal's mind and adamant as a knight's vows. As it was not, its quills were the colour of anger, poking out from feathers of light green and vibrant blue. Its teeth shone with thoughts of hunger and its eyes looked and smelled like cunning. It crawled from the maze into the throne room of mighty Tzeench where the ancient god lay asleep in his throne. The creature's eyes raised to the orb of fate, hanging above the floor from chains of thought. The creature howled, its voice was the mixed voices of a nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine cunning liars speaking nine lies. Was the creature sad? Could daemons get sad? Was it afraid? If it was not, it should have been.**

**All behind it, nothing came, replacing this realm of chaos. It was not darkness, for darkness implied shadow, which was something in itself. Instead, it was a colourless, shadeless, lightless void of neither light nor dark but simple nonexistence. To properly describe what it would look like in mortal words would not be practicle. The creature scampered from the advancing nothing to reach its master and creator, seated upon his throne.**

**The Architect of Fate was starving-thin, with exposed ribs and fingers too thin to lift themselves. His many eyes were closed and vacant, his many lips closed, unspeaking. No magic leapt from his form and no powerful plots schemed through his immortal brain. Lord Tzeench was dead, passing away peacefully in his sleep like a mortal. **

**The creature could only look in disbelief at the dead god and then wonder. Truly, Tzeench had died calmly and painlessly. Even the daemon, whose haunches were muscled by solid bravado, knew this was a good way to die. Perhaps Tzeench had chosen this death for himself, knowing it was the best way? **

**The creature had no time to contemplate this. First, the nothingness was creeping up to him and then there was only…**

**Nothing. **

…

**Every Astartes and every heretical space marine stood upon Camlan almost without exception, with the loyalist charge aided by a line of tanks, which presently reaped a heavy toll from the chaos warriors. By now though, the melee was too mixed to risk using their battlecannons. Blood Angel and Imperial Fists fought Worldeaters and Iron Warriors. A thick block of space marines: every Iron Hand that still lived, was churning into the throngs of Emperor's Children. Even the Black Legion had arrived at last, spilling upon the newly arrived defenders to sew carnage amongst them. The air was rent with the clash of blades and the occasional roar of a gun. The coloured heraldry of both sides flew together in a mad clash of shades. Blood and bodies coated the floor in a grisly layer. Through the churning maelstrom, strode huge dreadnoughts that fought and killed until they themselves collapsed under smaller attackers. Terminator squads chewed down whole squads. Assault marines and raptors clawed one another from the air only to drop down to spill more blood before finally being killed. The orderly formations of the Astartes and traitor legions were melting away to the intensity of the grinding battle. To Fuegan, it embodied the very spirit of violent humanity. **

'**Apollyon will be here soon,' he thought with worry. 'I must hurry, the Salamanders will be here soon.' Fingering the tracer beacon that would guide the Salamander's mighty shot down, he slunk around Camlan, edging closer to the great tower. He had to succeed here, it was his greatest purpose. **

**Fuegan knew he was not only the last Phoniex Lord, but also the last eldar. It was a visceral feeling that felt as sure as the ground beneath him. And it was so, Fuegan was indeed the last. With his death, they could finally be free. **

**For a few moments, lonely Fuegan was not alone. His friend was with him, masked and cloaked but wordless. They walked a few paces alongside the eldar and then he was gone, leaving the Phoenix Lord alone once more. **

…

**The dying was ecstatic. The mighty space marines grinding themselves to extinction against the faithful warriors of chaos was pleasing to him. All around, men fought with the fury of gods and died in horrible agony. To his left, three Death Guard were melting a Raven Guard trooper. To his right, a Word Bearer and Black Templar were locked in a ferocious duel. Around him, the death and dying were writhing on the ground, bleeding but still chopping at the feet of their enemies. Blood sprayed across everything, warming Fulgrim's youthful face. It was intoxicating. **

"**Ah, the thrill," he whispered. All around, the noble space marines were killing each other like beasts. Knives hacked, axes chopped, ancient weapons killed and heroes died and were made, sometimes at the same time. The intensity of the fight should have split Camlan in two. It was as beautiful as an ancient battle on Terra in its ancient days, when men-at-arms fought with steel swords and shields, when wars were won by cunning, courage and strength rather than the dull pull of a gun's trigger. The killing here required method, precision and some style. How to swing the chainsword, how hard a mace must be swung to break bone, how hard a knife is to be thrown to cleave powered armour. It was an art. **

**To his right, a Black Legion lord went down, pierced by a thrown knife from the advancing Iron Hands. Fulgrim drew his swords. He could see them advancing through the sea of pink and black that were his troops. Many Emperor's Children died, but just as many Iron Hands were dragged down. As they broke the faithful aside like waves, they were snatched and skewered by chaotic rapiers and fine, silk-wrapped swords. The Iron Hands tramped over their dead to push the chaos marines back toward their primarch. An Iron Hand fell, blood spraying from his neck, a Slaaneshi broadsword was rose-coloured. An Emperor's Children marine was sawed in two by a roaring chainsword in a bright spray of pretty blood.**

**The excitement of and the beauty of the battle of Camlan excited Fulgrim's daemonic senses. Affecting his unnatural mind in a way it could not to any mortal, Fulgrim began to see illusions dancing about him to make the killing more beautiful. There! A flapping white griffin flying over the battlefield. There! A half-seen vision of a beautiful blonde-haired boy and an enticing young, crow-haired maiden, battling fiercely with silver swords amidst the warring space marines. There! Amidst the three-quarters dead squad of Ultramarines stood an albino man in dark platemail, his hair as white as the Ultramarine's insignia, sprouting goat horns and cloven hoofs for feet. And there! Amidst the Iron Hands…**

**It was a headless Ferrus Manus. **

'**Ha!' Fulgrim thought, 'an illusion.' The Iron Hands and their primarch drew closer, thinning with every step. Even without his head, Ferrus Manus looked angry by his powerful stride. 'How I miss him so, it would be a pleasure to see him here,' Fulgrim thought. 'But that is illusion.' The illusion did not disappear. The headless figure advanced on him, breaking ahead of the Iron Hands and swinging back his blade. Fulgrim did not defend himself, instead looking at the illusion with an idiot look.**

'**What a happy illusion,' his intoxicated thoughts mused. Moments later…**

…

"**Fulgrim is dead," Valchonius heard over his earpiece. The Black Templar cut down another heretic, falling back to Usoran's side. **

"**Praise the Emperor," Usoran said, also hearing the words in his earpiece. **

"**Who has slain him?" Vashuss asked from beside him, looking around the melee about them. Valchonius did not make out the answer when the earpiece blared it, due to the roar of a warrior's chainsword. **

"**He was seen headless on the floor," Usoran recited for Valchonius. "One of the Iron Hands captains got him. Of which one it was, no one seems to be sure. They didn't see his face."**

…

**Apollyon could hear the fighting. All of him could. Blood in his eyes, he rushed towards the palace with the Hornet Legion. **

'**They took away my enslavers,' he thought spitefully, 'they spared the aliens of the galaxy. They must die.'**

…

**High above Terra, a single ship exploded out of the warp. **

**The Salamanders had arrived. **

**It was only by the grace of the Emperor's justice that they had not been destroyed by the sudden warp storm that rocked the immaterium. When the Salamanders had finally escaped the warp's grip, only their primarch's mighty ship was still afloat. The others, and their battle-brothers, had been lost. It was an ignoble death for five-sixths of the chapter to suffer, alas, given what was happening on Terra it was likely a weak gesture compared to the victories their dying cannon could bring in the few shots it had within it.**

**Long and green, the ancient barge soared through the emptiness of space, past the burning, floating debris of naval casualties. Tears scarred her ancient skin, flames of red leapt up from her engine, her whole port side was blackened and crippled. Inside her echoing quarters, a few dead Salamanders lay, slain by daemons. Only the mighty cannon itself remained flawless, by what the captain could only think of as a miracle. No system was driven offline and no scratches hurt her barrel. Were she mounted on a more space-worthy ship, he could use her to reconquer Terra. **

"**Evacuate the ship," the Salamanders captain said over the vox-speakers. "Crew, to the gun and prepare to fire her. The rest of you are to depart immediately for the surface." His eyes and heart hurt when he looked at the burning planet before him. It was a tiny star, whose soft rosy light coloured his black skin pink. "Now!" he repeated, "lock onto our brother's signals on the surface and fly to them!" What could have drawn them all together into such a tight formation? On the controls that lay on the bridge, he could see dozens of red blips that designated Astartes were all clustered in a single general area less than a square kilometer in area. Of course, this was hard to verify. As sparks danced down from the wounded ceiling, the controls flickered and went dead. The warp had blinded their ship. **

"**Is anything still working?" the captain asked the techmarine behind him.**

"**The cannon," blared the marine's synthetic voice, his masked face inspecting an ugly fissure across the wall from which leapt teal sparks. "And the vox-network and the engines. I fear firing the cannon may overheat our engines. Vulkan's child of destruction could be our deaths." Deep within the ship, a grinding shudder of metal echoed up to them. Any moment, the captain feared the ship would split in two. Had the Emperor spared them from the warp only to let them die slowly here? Never!**

"**Salamanders! Depart!" the captain ordered. His words fell quiet as a thin flock of green thunderhawks flew from the dying ship's body and swept down earthward. Only the captain and the meager team of techmarines remained. **

"**Can you get a lock on the enemy?" asked the captain.**

"**The gun works but the ships sensors do not. We'd need a guidance beacon or some other reference signal if we are to take an accurate shot," replied the techmarine. From the back of the room, one of the junior techmarines spoke.**

"**Lord!" he said, his voice still human, "a transmission! It is an Imperial frequency!" The captain thanked the Emperor for this and waited for the transmission to arrive.**

"**Captain Prometheus, lock onto my signal and fire your cannon," instructed the voice that played over the ship's dying vox-network. "Now!" The accent he spoke with gave the captain pause.**

"**Who are you? You know me," Prometheus asked. It took a moment to broadcast his voice back to Terra. **

"**Lord, a targeting beacon has been located on the planet," one marine spoke. **

"**Fire the [i]Unbound Flame[/i]! Unleash its burning lance! NOW NOW NOW!" Something about the urgency in that accent told Prometheus what he had to do. **

"**Stranger," Prometheus asked, "whoever you are, firing the [i]Unbound Flame[/i] may destroy my ship. My only request is that you tell my story to whoever lives past these evil days." Silence. "Stranger?"**

"**Go with the Emperor then and let your story echo through the hollow corners of an empty eternity. I do not believe this war will yield any mortal survivors. Go with the Emper…" the transmission seemed to cut out, but Prometheus realized the speaker had been shot. He could hear gunfire in the background.**

"**My lord?" **

"**Fire the cannon. We are martyrs," Prometheus ordered.**

…

**Fuegan lay sprawled at the base of the iron tower, crouched in a hole ridden by a tank's shell. The battle itself lay a half kilometer away but Camlan was open and flat. From that distance, a chaos shell had found a gap in his armor. Fuegan fell and bled in the shell hole, alone. There were no warriors about him to slow his advance to the tower. Instead, by cruel irony, his own injury kept him back. The beacon lay in his hands. **

"**Please, men of the Emperor, do not fail us," Fuegan whispered as he fought back pain and rose up. He staggered towards the tower, beacon in hand, shells fying over him. A quick glance behind him showed a whole squad of Black Legion warriors making their way from the battle, their rattling guns driving relentlessly at him. He still had a way to go before he could reach the tower. He would take no chances, the [i]Unbound Flame[/i] had to hit the tower directly. **

**A shot struck his shoulder, breaking it. A shot struck his back, almost knocking him on his face. He staggered onward. A shot removed one of the halves of his great crest. He took a final hit to the back of the leg and collapsed, mere meters from the tower. He lay on the beacon, the shot would strike him! **

**Fuegan looked up at the tower. Upon it sat his last surviving friend, black-robed and masked, sitting casually on a lump of rock that jutted from the tower's bottom. He lazily turned his eyeless face to Fuegan, his metal lips in a gentle smile. Fuegan smiled back.**

"**Just me," Fuegan rasped to his friend, "I'm the last one. When I am gone, then you'll finally be complete." He reached over to the masked god. The robed one reached a gloved hand over to Fuegan and took his hand. With his divine strength, the masked one pulled Fuegan the last few meters to the tower. Fuegan triumphantly lifted the beacon to the tower. There. Let the Black Legion kill him if they could, his job was done. Fuegan lay against the beacon, shielding it from the bolterfire. He got hit a few more times but the little beacon was untouched. **

**Fuegan closed his eyes and hummed peacefully as the clouds parted before a solid pillar of blazing energy. The whole battle relented in the face of the incoming spike of flaming destruction that spiked downwards to Camlan. It was a lance strike, but greater than any lance strike that had ever been seen. It shone brighter and the intensity of its heat scalded unguarded skin even from this distance. The combatants fled for Camlan's edge as the shot came down, burning everything within a kilometer of its intensity to dust. If lesser men fought here, the battle would have ended right then, in an ignoble draw by massacre. But the space marines could endure the heat and were guarded by their armor. **

**At the eye of the pillar-shaped sun, was the tower. It gave way to the lance like a tower of snow would give way to a falling star, leaving nothing. At the very bottom of it, the last eldar was decimated.**

**[i]The Burning Lance obliterated by the Burning Lance [/i]**


	51. Ynnead

**The hellish paradise of Slaanesh is said to be deep in the warp and home to the dreaded Palace of Slaanesh, which sits like an eye behind six regions that one must pass through to reach where the prince of pleasure himself. The deepest perversions of a mortal's dreams played out in one thousand forms all around each of these places. Daemonettes and other beautiful horrors of Slaanesh too numerous to mention drifted through these layers, looking for any mortal that had wandered from the universe into this place, their beautiful eyes glimmering as they waited in excitement for their next victim. **

**Their delights were answered when a black robed figure strode into the first of these freakish domains of poisoned fantasy. Daemonettes closed in, ready to claim the mortal's weak soul. But instead of succumbing to his or her own desires, the disciplined figure strode onward, face hidden underneath a black hood. When the figure, the daemonettes determined it was a man, reached the second of Slaanesh's layers, they had not even seen his masked face flinch from his path. Onwards, with rigorous determination, he strode. Whoever this masked pilgrim was, his lust did not tempt him to take a beautiful maiden when one was offered, nor did his hunger drive him to eat. The temptation of power and fame had no effect on this disciplined soul. Not even the utopia of Slaanesh's final layer could turn him from his path. The emotionless being walked through the golden threshold of the palace, tall and mighty, as it appeared before him, its walls stretching off for eternity in all directions.**

…

"**And soon, it will all be ours," sighed Slaanesh as his tongue lashed across the sculpted horns of the daemonette he had in his slender hands, his ivory skin shining like the moon in the light of the candles that lined the walls of his throne room. All the wealth in coins and jewelry that lay heaped against the wall was enough money to bribe an inquisitor or hire out an Astartes chapter. It was said that every coin that had ever been spent on an idle pleasure collected here in the warp. The door to the throne room could not even be seen behind the coinage that piled high, disappearing into the shadows that consealed the ceiling. "The galaxy, the Materium, all ours my love." **

"**I cannot wait my prince…oooo!" the daemonette tickled his chin and lounged against his chest. Slaanesh was about to tell her more, make her more promises, but fell quiet. He could feel the stranger approaching, each step like a ripple in a pond, each footfall like distant thunder. The humble daemonette blinked her eyes and looked in the direction her lord looked. She danced to her feet and grinned from ear to ear as what appeared to be a mortal man in a black cloak appeared in a gap between two piles of heaped jewels. His eyeless mask was pointed straight into Slaanesh's eyes. The prince of pleasure felt no fear when he found he could not bring power over this one.**

'**Not a mortal?' thought Slaanesh. 'How…pleasant.' The daemonette he was toying with danced across to the robed stranger, her tender fingers reaching out.**

"**Ah, welcome," she sang to him sweetly. "Make yourself comfortable. And do take off that cloak and that mask. Let me…" she grinned wickedly as she reached him, "…touch you." He stopped as she pulled back his hood.**

**With a shriek that would deafen a mortal listener, the daemonette exploded. Her pale flesh burnt away to ash in an inferno of blue flame. The stranger stepped through the ash cloud that hung in the air where the daemonette stood, still looking at Slaanesh with an empty stare. The ash turned to mist, and the daemonette was no more. And still the stranger came. Slaanesh smiled: amused.**

"**I see you are a tough one. But everyone, even the creatures of the warp, have their desires. Oh, please…PLEASE, tell me what you want, what will make you...sing your praises to me out into the vastness of the warp," asked Slaanesh. He licked his lips and held forth a handful of pleasure, offering it as a gift. Around his head, love danced, and in his eyes burned the fires of passion. A spark of the flame in his eyes would cause even the most senior of the Sisters of Battle to damn her pledges and leap into his masculine arms. But the man did not shift. His metal face did not move as he stopped in front of Slaanesh: six meters away. He did nothing but pull his hood back on.**

"**Your deepest desires…anything," whispered Slaanesh. "Do you want a whole planet to sate your lust upon?" The man reached into the fold of his cloak. Slaanesh hoped he was undressing, but he instead drew a sword, which Slaanesh could ****tell had been built from the bones of dead eldar gods. Slaanesh's smile melted and a frown creased his flawless brow. He took a half step back.**

"**What do you want?" he asked as the fires faded from his piercing blue eyes. He discarded the pleasure, which winked away as soon as Slaanesh's skin left it. The man did not answer, but instead raised the blade to challenge the god of excess. **

**At this moment, Slaanesh felt a sensation he did not usually feel. It was as intoxicating as wine but sharp as the kiss of a flame but it was unpleasant and difficult for Slaanesh to endure. Panic. **

"**Who are you?" Slaanesh demanded sharply, drawing a silver-edged saber into being and raising it to defend himself. "Who sent you? Why are you here? Why won't you take off that soulless mask and speak to me?!" **

**[i]"Yehn Ay Yad,"[/i] whispered the man's ethereal voice not from behind his mask as a mortal would. Instead, Slaanesh felt the voice, rather than simply hearing it. **

"**Yehn Ay Yad?" Slaanesh asked quickly, searching the man for clues to his identity. If he were to write the word he'd just heard, he would spell it "Ynnead". "Is your name Ynnead? Are you eldar? That sword looks like the work of the eldar smith god Vaul…"**

**The man abruptly lunged forward and Slaanesh quickly blocked the strike. He drew back and waited for the man's next move. Behind the piles of coins, he could see a swarm of his faithful servants rush to his aid. All turned to dust when they approached the man. **

"**I will make you suffer," spat Slaanesh, coming forward again. Sparks of passion leapt from his sword as he and the stranger clashed. Lithe, graceful Slaanesh leapt about the man, trying to find a weakness in his defense. But the solitary swordsman, who had nothing to say except "Ynnead" was too great a fighter. He countered Slaanesh's grace with acrobatics of his own, leaping onto Slaanesh's blade and twirling over his head to land behind him. Slaanesh kicked the man in the back and sent him into a mound of coins. The gold turned to dust as it touched him, reducing a fortune to nothing in seconds. He leapt to his feet and dove into Slaanesh, turning into a storm of attacks. Slaanesh found himself overwhelmed and forced to retreat up a pile of coins to escape his unnamed attacker. His safety was over fast as the attacker collapsed the pile of coins, melting the bottom layers away to nothingness as he walked through the solid metal as easily as water. With a rumble, the coins came clattering down with bone breaking ferocity. Slaanesh leapt through the collapse, jumping away from the raining coins, all the while under the steel gaze of his attacker, who merely walked through the rain of coinage unscathed. Slaanesh barely parried his next strike. Coins rained down about the two as they clashed.**

"**Who are you?!" Slaanesh retreated as the last coin from the collapse came to a stop. This knowledge was one pleasure he could not have. So he continued the fight. It was a thrilling pleasure that he had not ever experienced before. The energy of their movement, the perfect footwork, the gliding thrusts and parries combined into a dance of steel that seemed incomplete without music. **

**[i]"Yehn Ay Yad,"[/i] **

"**What does Ynnead mean?" Slaanesh stabbed at his foe's belly.**** The attacker dodged the strike and struck at Slaanesh's flank. The young chaos god was too fast and leapt up atop another pile of coins, low enough to escape easily if the pile collapsed. "What do you want? I can make you happy…"**

**The attacker stabbed the ground, driving the tip of his sword a few centimeters into the ground. Slaanesh could feel his throne room shudder under the gale of energy thrown into it. His throne room, his own throne room, was changing. Only when the mountains of coins unanimously fell did Slaanesh cry out in outrage and charge his opponent. **

**Like dancers in a golden rainstorm, the two fought furiously under the falling hail of coins and the dust that they were turning into. Slaanesh was often blinded by his own coins and forced to duck back while his enemy did not need to worry. Swords beat aside coins as they fell, cutting some in two before the coins melted to powder. The two swords flashed tirelessly, up and down, left and right. There was nowhere to go. Slaanesh could duck and jump, dodge and swing, but the masked man had him matched to a step. He did nothing but lead him on a dance through the falling coins. **

**Slaanesh jumped into the air to avoid a sideways attack. His feet left the ground and his body went parallel, jumping over the attacker's chilling sword. Slaanesh pressed his claw against the flat of the blade to help himself over, stabbing at the enemy's face. The enemy ducked his masked head beneath his sword and sprung backwards. For only a moment, neither duelist was touching the floor. Both landed gracefully, both bounded back to the other to continue their match. Were he not so intimately locked in combat with him, Slaanesh would have seen a friend in this stranger. **

**Then, the attacker ducked down beneath a sweep of Slaanesh's saber and slashed the god across the ankles. He dove nimbly back and waited. Slaanesh looked down at his cut ankles and made the wounds disappear. He smiled poisonously through the rain of coins at the hooded one.**

"**You will have to do better than that," he laughed as the last coins fell and turned to dust. The dust on the floor winked away and Slaanesh stepped forward. However, he paused when he realized his ankles were numb. He looked down at them and saw that they were healed, but no sensation reached out to his brain from them. His low skirt and the straps on his elegant sandals did not give him the simple pleasure of contact. Slaanesh looked up.**

"**What have you done?" he demanded. He stepped forward and his enemy stepped back. Slaanesh stopped and his enemy stopped. "What is this?" he cried out as his lower legs grew numb. It did not stop there. The numbness spread upwards until it had enveloped his whole body. **

**Sensation: it was gone. Slaanesh looked at his hands in horror and dropped his sword. He rubbed his arms, trying to restore sense. He clasped his face and ran his fingers across his lips. He could not feel anything. Kissing would no longer give him pleasure! Neither would…**

**HIS THRONE ROOM! Oh, his throne room!**

**It was so empty! Without his coins and his jewels, it was a barren cavern with distant gold walls that were all but brown in the dim light, diminished now that the gleam of wealth no longer filled it. He looked up at the ceiling and saw darkness. He looked around himself and saw vast emptiness. Nothing to look at but distant walls and darkness! Without the piled wealth, this room was not pleasant to Slaanesh as it had once been. Now it was a depressing place of loneliness and shadow. Slaanesh fell to his knees as he imagined what would happen to his realm, to his lovely daemonettes, to his followers. His knees didn't even hurt when they thudded to the floor. **

"**Please…" Slaanesh whispered as his attacker approached him. Slaanesh grabbed for his sword, but found it had turned to dust. He looked in fear as the attacker reached for Slaanesh's throat with his free hand. "Please…I don't want to die. What…what do you want?"**

**[i]"Yehn Ay Yad,"[/i] Slaanesh coughed as the man lifted him to his feet and drove his sword through Slaanesh's breast. It didn't even hurt. The bottom half of Slaanesh's beautiful body turned to powder, than disintegrated, leaving the attacker to hold him up by his neck. **

"**I don't want to die," Slaanesh begged in horror as the walls of his chamber were lost from sight under a thickening shadow. Like oncoming water, the darkness consumed the walls and the floor until he was alone with his murderer upon an island of dark grey stone on an endless sea of blackness. "Leave me alone." The masked man drew his sword back and clove Slaanesh's head from his shoulders, killing the god. **

…

**The mysterious masked attacker had a name. It was Ynnead. He lowered his sword from Slaanesh. Just as Slaanesh was born from the collective depravity of an entire race, Ynnead was born from the disciplined souls of the eldar, held deep within the infinity circuits of the craftworlds. **

**And now Ynnead had finally finished his job.**

**Ynnead ducked his head back peacefully as the nothingness swallowed him. First the island was gone, and then his feet were gone and then he was gone, like a forgotten dream, just like the eldar. **

**Nothing. **


	52. Angron, Mortarion, Apollyon

**The creature that Apollyon had become was unlike anything that had ever tread upon mortal soil. Even the machinations of chaos could not have come up with what now stood in flesh and form before the Black Tomb. It looked like a great chitinous insect of the locust species, standing as tall as a dreadnought upon six legs that ended in clawed feet. Three pairs of long wings reached out from his back in a transparent cloak. Whipping from behind him was a wicked scorpion tail mounted by a stinger. His armor was studded with hard spines and wicked blades. He was every inch a beast except for the head. It was Apollyon's own head, humanlike and coloured to the colour of his natural skin. It looked like the giant's head had been sewn to the decapitated form of a walking nightmare. Apollyon flexed his claws and slashed a deep gash across the Black Tomb's hide. **

"**You shall die!" Apollyon screamed, his voice like a bell, "die! You are weak, you are a fool!" He brought his other claw around to break into the dreadnought's armored hide. His forelimb was caught before it could fall and was crushed to pulp in the machine's hand. Apollyon whipped back, his fluttering wings taking him away from the dreadnought, which thundered forward like a bolt of lightning. Apollyon sidestepped the charging dreadnought and carved deep into its armored hull with his surviving hand. The Black Tomb swung a heavy brawler's strike at him, smashing into the primarch, but failing to so much as crack his chitin. Apollyon gave a mocking cackle and lifted off into the air…**

…

**Dracuel lifted off into the air, dodging Angron's axe. He swung the blade down at the daemon, cutting into his ivory horns. Sparks lifted from the blade as it ate away into the bony crown the daemon wore. Dracuel barely managed to dodge a swatting blow from Angron's free hand. The winged marine flew to the corner and readied his chainsword. **

"**You shall not harm my Emperor," Dracuel promised, his voice deep and carrying an accent that Angron recognized too well.**

"**Blood for the blood god," Angron snapped back, "Khorne's power is my power. His will guides me." Angron charged Dracuel, "you cannot beat Khorne you fool!" His axe bit into stone: Dracuel had bounded aside. Enraged, Angron brought his blade around to kill this upstart. The blade was parried. By a normal marine? Impossible! Angron and Dracuel exchanged crushing blows. Chainsword bit into axe, whirling teeth against hardened edge. Neither gained the upper hand over the other. Each combatant found the other's defense unyielding. Sparks leapt up and they continued their dance of blades, neither fighter drwing back, neither fighter letting a mistake bring him harm…**

…

**Usoran blocked Mortarion's evil scythe. The Lion Sword knocked the metal of Mortarion's blade to the floor. He took this chance and chopped into the weapon's shaft to try and leave it useless to the primarch. But not even his primarch's holy relic could undo the simple shaft of the fel scythe. **

"**You cannot stop your inevitable decay," Mortation jeered, swinging the scythe back and knocking Usoran flat on his back. "My blade needs but kiss you and your life is ended." Usoran rolled to the side to dodge the scythe and parried it in a hurry when Mortarion brought it masterfully around to strike at him as if striking wheat. Usoran's astartes body stung from the raw force of the daemon's impact. He fell back, blocking two more heavy blows. **

'**How can I beat him?' Usoran wondered. He was far larger and seemed to have limitless strength. Usoran could feel the tendrils of exhaustion working their way into him. He could not afford a moment of weakness! Mortarion swung again and Usoran ducked. He leapt back, almost falling over Afennor's corpse, now dry and seething with decay. What if Mortarion should fire another bolt? **

**He was a child. Usoran was a child. He had been a child before, locked in the soft, nimble and wiry body of his former self in his dreams before his primarch. Now he was a child again, this time humbled one hundred times by a primarch of another sort. He too was an angel, but he was an angel of decay and evil. **

**Mortarion swung again…**

…

**Apollyon swung again, his blow falling painfully against the Black Tomb's mechanical arm. The dreadnought was about to snatch Apollyon's remaining claw to sunder it from him, but the primarch had already flown away yet again. He slammed down onto a pile of bodies, taking a moment to finish off a pair of wounded astartes of the Imperial Fists before snarling at the Black Tomb, daring him to rush him. **

**The Black Tomb complied, storming across Camlan with a silent fury. The thunderclap punch he swnt at Apollyon could have broken his beastly form in two if it hadn't missed. Apollyon stepped into the Black Tomb and grasped him from the side, holding him still. **

"**I will take you apart," the primarch said. And then a jet of fire leapt from his lips, blanketing the dreadnought in a shield of fire. The dreadnought writhed under his grip, but in that moment, Apollyon made a mistake…**

…

"**I am Sanguinius!" Dracuel finally shouted. Angron and the Blood Angel separated, notches in their weapons, hatred in their eyes. **

"**Impossible," Angron laughed, "You…" what it was that silenced the primarch of carnage, not even Angron knew. But as the Blood Angel twisted his sword about to face his opponent, Angron hesitated. **

"**Sanguinius is dead," Angron growled.**

"**As will you, soon," Sanguini…Dracuel replied. He activated his wings and again propelled himself into the daemon. Angron struck with the force of a falling star and, for a moment, fire exploded between them. Chainsword met axe, holy vigour met bezerk madness, daemon met angel, primarch met primarch. Angron flew back from the force, stumbling and crashing to the floor. Dracuel landed, his wings sparking and smoking from the explosion. Both rose in a moment to confront one another. Angron hefted his axe. Dracuel rose his bare hands: his chainsword lay in ruins. **

"**The power of Khorne is yours?" asked Dracuel fearlessly. **

**"Why? Are you not afraid?" Angron jeered. He rushed Dracuel, axe raised. **

…

**Usoran had only one chance. He had to find another survivor, the Black Tomb! He retreated from Mortarion, heading frantically across the flat vastness of Camlan towards where the Black Tomb stood, his eyes not leaving Mortarion. He ducked and dodged heavy strikes or parried them with his sword. Once, Mortarion tried to maul him. A flash from the Lion Sword forced the monster to withdraw: a jet of bright yellow blood shooting from the laceration he left. **

"**You shall suffer eternally for that!" Mortarion roared, raising his hand, which began to blow a sickly green. Usoran had no choice: act now or suffer Afennor's fate. He saw one chance…**

…

"**AHH!" Apollyon leaned his head back in pain, flames shooting into the air. His hands left the Black Tomb and his face turned to look down at the offender. A single blade had found him, stabbing into his side, deep into one of his hearts. It was a gladius. Apollyon felt mechanical serpents coil around his insect wings, crushing and tearing away at them. **

"**Did you think you could strike me down so easily, Apollyon?" asked Vashuss, spitting out blood with every word. Apollyon reached down to the upstart's neck, choking him mercilessly. He intended to twist the man's head from his very shoulders like a child's toy! Unfortunately, it was the opening his opponent needed. Apollyon looked to the Black Tomb as a shadow fell across him.**

**The dreadnought's fist hit him with such force that his torso was torn clean from his giant body. Across Camlan it bounced, carried by the godly machine's powered fist. It landed in a pile of dead space marines. Apollyon's head faced the sky. **

"**My…my flesh…" the eleventh primarch whispered. And then, his last words spoken, he fell silent. **

…

**Mortarion was right, Usoran was going to die. For once he had accepted that and thoughts of his defense left him, Usoran saw the opening. He propelled himself forward, blade not raised to defend his flanks, but forward to stab. Mortarion cast away his energy and swung for Usoran. **

"**For the Usor! For Tabbercs!" Usoran yelled without knowing why, "for the Emperor!" He was close enough now. With all his might, he threw the Lion Sword the way the academy had shown him to do with royal longswords. Mortarion's two-handed blade did not protect him. Instead, it broke into Usoran's body and threw him to the ground in a spray of red. Usoran heard a cry of pain from Mortarion and raised his eyes to behold his work. **

**An angel made of light was smiting him with a flaming sword… the Lion Sword…**

**No, it wasn't. It was only Usoran's wishful thinking, no matter how real it had seemed. Mortarion instead stood where he was, the Lion Sword driven through his throat. With a shriek, the primarch threw his head back, green light emerging from his eyes and mouth. Usoran plugged his ears to the sound. **

"**Grandfather! I am sorry!" roared Mortarion's unnaturally loud voice. "Grandfather? Grandfather? Where are you grandfather?" With those words, the light ended. Mortarion fell one way and the Lion Sword fell another. The relic clattered to the ground and the fallen giant turned to black mist. **

"**Praise…the…Emperor," Usoran gasped as he stood up and held his side where the scythe had broken through. He staggered towards the sword. He had one thing left to do. **

…

**Dracuel smiled as Angron paused. **

"**The power of Khorne?" snarled Angron, "the power of Khorne?" he could feel it draining, like a mortal felt the onset of exhaustion as he worked. But this exhaustion came on swifter than was allowed and did not abate when Angron willed it. "My blessings! My power! What is happening?" Angron demanded as he breathed a tired breath. Dracuel calmly drew his pistol and shot Angron once, to no effect.**

"**The war is over," Dracuel replied. He did not defend himself as Angron raised his axe and stood calmly by as Angron's axe came down, cleaving the Blood Angel in two. Angron allowed himself a grin and headed towards the Eternity Gate. That damnable exhaustion built as he went on. He felt his strength leave him, his fire go out.**

**For once, he could not feel the Blood God. For across the void, there was nothing. The warp had consumed all, left nothing behind on the few thousand worlds of the Imperium but ashes and memories. Here and there, one could find a sterile colony but those were few and out of the way. Even here on Terra, there was nothing but corpses. The Imperial Guard had been overrun and the Custodes were destroyed by the tower's erection. They now lay lifeless in their stations, souls torn from their bodies. There was truly nothing left. **

**The war of thirteen thousand years, it had ended. No beginning to mortal rage, no murderous zeal, no wars to feed His hunger, no blood for the blood god. **

**Angron collapsed, unable to bear the weight of his own armor. And for a moment, as he lay, he shed his daemonic form. He was a man once again, muscled and insane. And then, there was only dust. **


	53. The Last Space Marine

**They lay across Camlan in piles. Loyalist and traitor, adeptus astartes, heretic, mangled and blooded. No longer to spread glory or death in the name of anything, but beaten and broken. The field was still, unmoving, as quiet as a crypt. A silent place for the greatest warriors in all the galaxy to sleep their final rest. Usoran, Vashuss and the Black Tomb, the only survivors, had already gone for the Imperial Palace.**

**It was totally silent. A rogue wind blew and hissed softly though the emptiness of the abandoned hive city, through the rusting wrecks of fighting vehicles and along even further through vacant air. It was a totally alien world, a moonscape of desolation and quiet. Fallen hives, dust, and shadows prevailed through the hives of Holy Terra where not even a fly made its home now. No lights shone, no vehicles moved, no souls hustled their overly busy bodies through the maze streets. Most of all though was the visceral loneliness. It sucked one's soul out of their body. The close-knit hives meant that any shout would be squelched to silence in the urban void. To have such a massive city free of life was unnatural. To call it a ghost town would be like calling a star a spark. **

"**Why Vashuss?" asked Usoran as he placed the Alpha Legion lord at the mouth of the Imperial Palace. The Black Tomb took its place behind him, ready to follow him to the Emperor.**

"**Chaos, it had to overreach itself…" Vashuss said, "from the start of the Horus Heresy, we have been trying to bring the Imperium to this moment, the only moment when chaos could wipe itself out. And now it has, and now we are all that remain of the Astartes." Usoran nodded. Not even the Salamanders had survived. Their crashed gunships were still strewn with the bodies of their dead. "I am sorry, there was no other way. Now the galaxy is empty, hollow, lifeless, thanks to the powers unleashed on it by the tower." He coughed. **

"**No, probably not completely," Usoran replied, "somewhere out there, there must be something…"**

"**No," Vashuss gasped, "finished." Usoran would not argue further. **

"**Come on, brother…"**

"I am not your brother!" Vashuss sputtered, coughing out blood. "I…I am not worthy. All the things I did in the Emperor's name. Just do what I asked you to do…" Usoran nodded and raised Afennor's rifle. 

"**Go with ease, my evil friend," Usoran said. And so it was that Afennor's special bullet found its home at last, deep inside Vashuss' skull. Usoran cast the weapon away and turned to the Black Tomb. "Goodbye," Usoran said softly to the primarch-dreadnought. Even now, the Black Tomb was slouching forward as whatever animated it gently abandoned it. Then, it was still, like a logic-engine when the power-conduit was pulled. He turned back to the palace.**

"**We're here," Usoran gasped to himself, clutching his injured flank. His fingers caressed the rift in his armor where Mortarion's final blow had fallen. He flinched and thought of the daemonic contagion that was swiftly claiming his life. Though defeated here, chaos would take at least a generation to fade completely. Though now feeble, it had not lost the power to kill. It would remain in the much-weakend form of Nurgle, who would yet remain untl the last living thing died. But then, he too would be gone. **

**He was alone, now shouldering not only the burden of the Emperor's forgiveness for his chapter, but the burden of being the last of the Adeptus Astartes. It was an honour he did not want and even as he carried out his final pilgrimage through the hallowed and hollow corridors of the Imperial palace, he wished he didn't have to live to see the last days of the Imperium. Once or twice he fell, Mortarion's wound stinging, overcome. But his courage and determination stood him back onto his feet each time, edging him forward towards the throne room where he had stood when these halls were busy and the Imperium was merely dying. Through bomb-shattered chapels, caved-in halls, even through a room that still burned with the wreck of a crashed marauder, Usoran drove. **

**He hurt the whole way. He bled the whole way. He weathered the pain for hours where any man, even an Astartes, would fall. But Usoran did not. This testing journey on its own would have been legendary were these halls still filled and the Imperium still alive. Now the only witnesses to his short but difficult quest were the staring marble angels that he walked beneath as he entered the presence of the Eternity Gate. **

**Usoran journeyed down the long road to the gate from the entrance to the mammoth chamber containing it. He was unopposed as he passed by it and entered into the presence of the Golden Throne, surrounded by lifeless guards. It was there that Usoran cried for the second time since becoming a Dark Angel.**

"**My lord," he said, head bowed and sword held up. "My name is Brother-Captain Usoran of the Dark Angels and I am the last of nine true legions and their chapters." Prayer was easy. What did one say when one was here? "My lord," Usoran held the blade up. "Behold, the mended sword of Lion El'Jonson. Forgive the Dark Angels for their failings and their sins and their heresies. Absolve their conscience so that I may sleep in peace. The scourge of the warp is killed. After thirteen thousand years it is finally over. It…" Usoran looked up, "my lord, it is over!" He bowed his head once more and held up the sword in both hands. His body was thrown into scourging agony from the strain. It was like the Emperor was testing him. He placed the sword on the Emperor's lap.**

**[i]Usoran. Sit by the throne. Sit by my throne, Usoran my son. [/i] Did he only imagine that or was that the pain talking? Regardless, Usoran did so without question, seating himself to the throne's left. He closed his eyes.**

…

**He was a child again, lying in a comfortable bed in a warmly lit room of wood, a lionskin rug on the floor and a motherly rocker in the corner. A brave sword hung above where the youth lay. Usoran lifted his pale hands up to wipe his weary eyes. He was sleepy.**

"**[i]You have done well my boy [/i]"**

**Usoran looked at Lion El'Jonson, now standing by his bedside. It could have been Usoran's little eyes, but the man was transparent like water. **

"**Chaos…it destroyed all?" his tiny voice asked.**

"**[i]Perhaps, out of the nothingness, life might yet bloom. But that is a question for the ages. Our war is won. Chaos cannot trouble us any longer,[/i]" the primarch promised. A thin hand reached down and stroked Usoran's brow with a father's love. "[i]It's time to go now.[/i]" Usoran nodded, a weak smile bending his boy-lips.**

"**Where are we going?" he asked.**

"**[i]We're going home,[/i]" Jonson promised, "take my hand." Usoran had to squint to see it, it was so hard to see now that it was so clear. His young fingers closed around the old man's hand and he rose up. His sandals clicked against the ground. **

"**Thank you," Usoran Tabbercs whispered with all his strength. And, side by side, the pair walked off into eternity.**

…

**It was totally silent. A rogue wind blew and hissed softly though the emptiness of the abandoned hive city, through the rusting wrecks of fighting vehicles and along even further through vacant air. It was a totally alien world, a moonscape of desolation and quiet. Fallen hives, dust, and shadows prevailed through the hives of Holy Terra where not even a fly made its home now. No lights shone, no vehicles moved, no souls hustled their overly busy bodies through the maze streets. Most of all though was the visceral loneliness. It sucked one's soul out of their body. The close-knit hives meant that any shout would be squelched to silence in the urban void. To have such a massive city free of life was unnatural. To call it a ghost town would be like calling a star a spark. **

**And so it was that the final flames ignited by the Horus Heresy, which had been waged one hundred and thirty centuries before, were extinguished at last forever. **

**And so it was that the Age of Man ended with as dignified an end as he could have hoped for.**

**And so it was that the war across the stars ended.**


	54. Without the Emperor

**Many decades pass**

…

**He was over a planet that had once teemed with civilization, contemplating his choices.**

**For fifty years Rarend had plied the stars, alone, and for fifty years he was only further assured that he was the last man left in the galaxy. Warp travel was safe, for as the last cities of sterile humans aged and died, the emotions that fed chaos were eternally drained. Where once a burning maelstrom spun to forge the Immaterium, now a gentle stream of white silver spun. No daemon nor monster could climb forth from the Immaterium as there was nothing left to birth it. Rarend finally let his navigator die after they were spun off course and, in the space of two minutes in the warp, finding one century had passed in the Materium. The last sterile mutant cities were depopulated. Rarend was the last man in the galaxy. There was no more need to travel these empty stars. **

**He sighed with the weight of what he knew. The Imperium was gone, as was chaos and so were the xenos. The plan that the doomed eldar had set him on finally came into focus. He still had Project Gaia. **

"**Why me, Asurmen. Why me?" Rarned looked down at the planet through the window in the chamber of his craft. He touched the window and weighed his options.**

**On one hand, he could repopulate this world with intelligent life or he could break the small mechanical artifact. **

"**If," he said aloud, "I populate this world, I could sew the seeds of a brand new Imperium. A new human, a new empire, all from me." He closed his eyes. "On the other hand, I could reawaken chaos as well. Would this empire be as depraved as mine? Would it even be an empire of humans?" Rarend grew sick the prospect of spawning an Imperium of xenos. As a member of the Ordo Xenos, to do something like that would be the ultimate failure. But life was life! Was it then better to have a galaxy of emptiness? Would Project Gaia even work? Was he being tricked by the eldar into doing something else entirely? But mankind surely deserved another chance. All he had to do was drop the cylinder onto the planet. It was unbelievably simple and he would not live to see the fullest results. If he spawned an alien society from the bosom of the world he brought to life, he would die in blissful ignorance of it. **

**So what would he do? **

**Rarend opened his eyes. Reaching into his holster, Rarend produced his plasma pistol and turned it off. He looked over the room he sat in. It was rectangular, its floor covered by a red rug, and the wall opposite the windows carried only bland star charts. Rarend occupied the only chair and intentionally left the small table in the corner empty. He would unconsciously make the choice. If the pistol's barrel faced the window then Rarend would seed the planet below him with Project Gaia. If it faced the charts, then the galaxy those charts showed would continue on without his intervention. **

**Rarend flipped his pistol. The weapon landed with a clatter then went still, its position definite. Rarend sighed and nodded: he settled on which choice he would take. Rarend looked down at Project Gaia in his hands. A shaft of sunlight reached into the window, catching the tiny artifact's metal. The light shone up from its surface, illuminating Rarend's somber eyes. **

**THE END**


End file.
